e-Health readiness assessment tools for healthcare institutions in developing countries.

e-Health Readiness refers to the preparedness of healthcare institutions or communities for the anticipated change brought by programs related to Information and Communications Technology (ICT). This paper presents e-Health Readiness assessment tools developed for healthcare institutions in developing countries. The objectives of the overall study were to develop e-health readiness assessment tools for public and private healthcare institutions in developing countries, and to test these tools in Pakistan.

Addressing the non-medical determinants of health: a survey of Canada's health regions.

Background: The Canadian health system is undergoing reform. Over the past decade a prominent trend has been creation of health regions. This structural shift is concurrent with a greater emphasis on population health and the broad determinants of health.

Performance measurement in healthcare: part II--state of the science findings by stage of the performance measurement process.

Objective: This paper summarizes findings of a comprehensive, systematic review of the peer-reviewed and grey literature on performance measurement according to each stage of the performance measurement process--conceptualization, selection and development, data collection, and reporting and use. It also outlines implications for practice.

Methods: Six hundred sixty-four articles about organizational performance measurement from the health and business literature were reviewed after systematic searches of the literature, multi-rater relevancy ratings, citation checks and expert author nominations.

Performance measurement in healthcare: part I--concepts and trends from a State of the Science Review.

Objective: Performance measurement is touted as an important mechanism for organizational accountability in industrialized countries. This paper describes a systematic review of business and health performance measurement literature to inform a research agenda on healthcare performance measurement.

Methods: A search of the peer-reviewed business and healthcare literature for articles about organizational performance measurement yielded 1,307 abstracts.

Assessing efficacy of complementary medicine: adding qualitative research methods to the "Gold Standard".

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have an important place in the assessment of the efficacy of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). However, they address only one, limited, question, namely whether an intervention has-statistically-an effect. They do not address why the intervention works, how participants are experiencing the intervention, and/or how they give meaning to these experiences.