Wenxing Wang, Jeroen van Wijngaarden, Martina BuljacâSamardĆŸiÄ, Joris van de Klundert
Many Global Health initiatives aim to disseminate best practices to developing countries to improve access and quality of care. However, current concepts of successful innovation are primarily based on studies conducted in developed, Western countries. Little is known about the structural factors influencing the uptake of these innovations in non-Western developing countries. This gap motivated our study on the introduction of âbest international practices in health service deliveryâ in China. We conducted semi-structured online interviews with 20 participants, consisting of 10 Chinese, 9 Dutch, and 1 German, to advance scientific understanding of this topic. Four themes of structural factors that influence the adoption and adaption of health service delivery innovations originating from abroad in China emerged. These four themes include: Alignment with governmental policies and regulations, Leadership engagement on multiple levels, Alignment between internal stakeholders, and Matching incentives with both organizational and personal interests. While adoption is always top-down, adaption often follows a bottom-up approach in the Chinese context. Resource scarcity in primary care institutions adds extra difficulties to bottom-up innovations. Health professionalsâ motivations to adopt and adapt foreign innovations are primarily controlled (externally) instead of autonomous (internally), which can diminish sustainability. Reducing workload and increasing salaries can facilitate resolving motivation challenges. Our findings indicate that differences exist in the adoption and adaptation of foreign innovations in developing countries with tight government control and a centralized health system such as China, compared to developed countries with decentralized health systems.
Spa services in wellness tourism often face limitations in transparency, service integration, and customer trust in operational flows. This study develops a blockchain-based smart contract model that integrates five key indicators: reservations, cancellations, customer satisfaction, inventory, scheduling, and finance. A literature review of 113 articles yielded 25 key references, with significant trends such as the occurrence of the keyword âcustomer reservationâ 10,100 times (2020â2024). Linear regression, correlation analysis, and ANOVA methods were used to test the research results. Linear regression predicts the relationship between variables, while correlation measures the strength of the relationship. The calculation results show a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.93 (α = 0.05), indicating a very strong linear relationship. ANOVA shows significant differences between groups. These findings confirm that blockchain-based smart contracts are effective in digitally automating spa service workflows, strengthening transparency, and improving customer satisfaction
Through the commercial determinants of health framework, gambling has been identified as a powerful threat to health. This research critically examines cryptocurrency, which is promoted and sold as a highly gamblified product. Using the commercial determinants of health framework, the multifaceted ways in which cryptocurrency firm operations may impact health outcomes are highlighted. Political influence is exerted through substantial donations, with high-profile cases illustrating the sector's attempts to sway policy, whilst cryptocurrencies often operate in unregulated markets. Marketing strategies mirror those of traditional harmful industries, deploying immense advertising budgets and celebrity endorsements to promote highly speculative and risky financial products. Cryptocurrency mining, demanding considerable energy consumption, causes significant environmental damage. Financial practices include hundreds of outright frauds targeting low- and middle-income countries. Cryptocurrency investment, with 24/7 access and promises of huge wealth, mirrors gambling and is likely to result in public health harms through the same mechanisms as other forms of gambling. Despite the supposed potential of blockchain technology for improving payment and contract systems, the lack of realization of these benefits contrasts sharply with the immediate and growing costs associated with cryptocurrency speculation. Cryptoassets are a case study for the need for health promotion professionals to critically evaluate new technologies and advocate for regulatory measures to protect public health in the face of novel, high-risk products that overlap gambling and finance.
Sarah M. Thornton, Pradeep K. Attaluri, Ellen C. Shaffrey, Peter J. Wirth · 6 authors
Cryptocurrency offers a decentralized alternative to traditional financial systems, facilitating peer-to-peer transactions with minimal fees and heightened security. It also transformed into a financial asset similar to gold. Despite its volatile valuation, recent developments, such as the approval of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds by the Securities and Exchange Commission, underscore its evolving role as an investment opportunity. Plastic surgery has increasingly embraced cryptocurrency as a form of payment, leveraging its speed, security, and privacy benefits. However, alongside its potential advantages, risks such as volatility, irreversibility of transactions, and regulatory uncertainties warrant careful consideration. Moving forward, the integration of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency is poised to revolutionize various aspects of plastic surgery, from patient privacy to postoperative monitoring devices, necessitating a proactive approach from surgeons to navigate this evolving landscape. This article explores the intersection of cryptocurrency and plastic surgery, delving into its current applications, risks, investment potential, and future prospects.
Health tourism is a rapidly growing health service model in the world. Today, its use by health service demanders has become widespread. The health tourism sector is a sector that combines health and tourism, where individuals who demand health services can receive treatment services by traveling. In the health sector, where technology is used intensively, innovative approaches are emerging in the provision of health services. NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), a new digital asset that has emerged in recent years with the development of blockchain, offers different usage areas in health tourism with its features. NFTs are defined as unique digital assets and are supported by blockchain technology. This new approach offers innovative opportunities for health tourists and health tourism organizations, data security, and payment methods. This innovative technology can make the health tourism experience more transparent and secure. This study is expected to contribute to the sector with an innovative alternative payment method for practitioners in health tourism, which is an international service model.
Giovanni Guarducci, Gabriele Messina, Simona Carbone, Nicola Nante
BACKGROUND: In a Beveridgean decentralized healthcare system, like the Italian one, where regions are responsible for their own health planning and financing, the analysis of patients' mobility appears very interesting as it has economic and social implications. The study aims to analyze both patients' mobility for hospital rehabilitation and if the beds endowment is a driver for these flows; Methods: From 2011 to 2019, admissions data were collected from the Hospital Discharge Cards database of the Italian Ministry of Health, population data from the Italian National Institute of Statistics and data on beds endowment from the Italian Ministry of Health website. To evaluate patients' mobility, we used Gandy's Nomogram, while to assess if beds endowments are mobility drivers, we created two matrices, one with attraction indexes (AI) and one with escape indexes (EI). The beds endowment, for each Italian region, was correlated with AI and EI. Spearman's test was carried out through STATA software; Results: Gandy's Nomogram showed that only some northern regions had good hospital planning for rehabilitation. A statistically significant correlation between beds endowment and AI was found for four regions and with EI for eight regions; Conclusions: Only some northern regions appear able to satisfy the care needs of their residents, with a positive attractions minus escapes epidemiological balance. The beds endowment seems to be a driver of patients' mobility, mainly for escapes. Certainly, the search for mobility drivers needs further investigation given the situation in Molise and Basilicata.
Sreejith Balasubramanian, Shalini Ajayan, Cody Morris Paris
Abstract There are significant challenges facing the medical tourism industry: privacy and transparency concerns, lack of access to centralized medical records, fraudulent practices, opportunistic behavior of intermediaries, foreign currency risks, and contractual/legal issues. While blockchain technology has immense potential to address the industryâs inherent challenges and inefficiencies, the current understanding of blockchain application in medical tourism is fragmented. Through a pragmatic review of the literature, this study explores the blockchain applications and benefits for medical tourists across the stages of the medical tourism value chain, and in the process, proposes a meaningful and managerially relevant blockchain framework for medical tourism. The findings and the proposed novel framework to guide policy interventions and support mechanisms to take advantage of the full opportunities of blockchain in medical tourism.
Inessa Tyan, Antonio JesĂșs Guevara Plaza, Mariemma I. YagĂŒe
The paper discusses the benefits of blockchain technology for medical tourism. The major focus is placed on pre-procedure and post-procedure of medical tourism. The authors argue that blockchain technology can facilitate several stages of medical tourism by enabling disintermediation, allowing cryptocurrency payments, ensuring secure data sharing and privacy, and empowering trusted review systems. With regard to COVID-19 pandemic, the paper outlines the current challenges of the medical tourism industry and prop oses the opportunities for blockchain technology use. The paper attempts to provide important insights regarding the positive implications of blockchain technology use within the medical tourism industry as well as to further advance the current knowledge about blockchain technologyâs effects for medical tourism.
The relevance of the article is due to the process of progressive aging of the population, so it requires from society to find new ways to work with the elderly and their needsâ realization. The article characterizes the current state of the category of elderly people in Ukrainian society. It is noted that support for the elderly is provided through a variety of resources, for example, formal and informal support networks, volunteering, the state, family, community, and society in general. The formal support network is implemented through the social policy of the state, which is focused on assisting in ensuring the rights of the elderly to their social protection of constitutional rights and freedoms. The aim of the article is to reveal the peculiarities of the needsâ realization of the elderly through formal and informal support networks. Research methods applied: generalization â to study the formal network of support, which is implemented through the social policy of the state and focused on constitutional rights for the elderly and social protection; analysis â combining and representing connections of individual elements, parties, components of a complex phenomenon and so in the comprehension of the whole in its componentsâ unity. The directions of reforming the system of social services are aimed at an authoritative legal framework, where social protection of the elderly would be enshrined at the appropriate level. They includ: deinstitutionalisation through the creation of a wide network of services and facilities that can provide quality services in the community; involvement of non-governmental organizations in the provision of social services; approach of social services to the place of residence; decentralization of management processes, financing, location of services; empowering older people to choose services and participate in the process; increasing the effectiveness of the provision of social services through the study of needs at the individual level and within individual administrative-territorial units; introduction of quality improvement technologies, including monitoring, evaluation and control.
Sharing medical data with numerous stakeholders for varied purposes is a perplexing problem facing healthcare systems throughout the world. All this needs to be done, whilst ensuring patient and health data privacy and data integrity. Through this paper, an attempt has been made to present a novel distributed digital health record management system. The blockchain framework has been built using the tools provided by hyper ledger, an open source project. This system empowers patients with a comprehensive, secure, immutable, and easily accessible digital record of their health. Also, this information is available across multiple practitioners and healthcare providers throughout the world. This system can therefore empower the emergence of health data economics, empowering researchers with the health data and giving patients an opportunity to share their health data without losing anonymity. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a prototype of a health data management system utilising blockchain.
Background: This study aimed to explore the process of establishing a non-governmental and nonprofit hospital, as a corporate infantry, and a model for the establishment of autonomous and corporate hospitals. Materials and Methods: This was a qualitative case study. The data were collected by interviewing the founders of Moheb Mehr Hospital, staff and some university officials and charity organizations. The data analysis was conducted based on grounded theory principles and data were coded in three stages of open, axial and selective coding. Results: The primary factors behind the establishment of Moheb Hospital were the low level of physicianschr('39') fees and the physiciansâ dual practice in the public and private sectors. The existence of unused spaces at Hashemi-Nejad Hospital and the possibility of contracting supplementary insurance were the secondary factors. The reaction included welcoming from hospital physicians and opposition from the government and the Ministry of Health. A good patient access was created due to the lower charges, in comparison to the private sector, and having contract with the supplementary insurance. The negative comments from the government and the Ministry were gradually adjusted. Conclusion: The decentralization initiatives of the public sector in hospitals should be considered as a bottom-up process. Instead of turning government hospitals into independent or corporate, it is better to re-establish them in an autonomous or corporate form. Also, before any decentralization action, financial and managerial stability must be created in the organizations. Morevoer, employee benefits must be preserved. Instead of receiving government funding, it is better to use the capacity of the endowment and receive bank loans.
Grigorii Ursol, Alexandr Skrypnyk, O. M. Vasylenko
The article analyzes the strengths, weaknesses, potential opportunities and threats in the process of forming and making appropriate management decisions to integrate health facilities into united territorial communities (UTC) infrastructure, or other options, in the process of decentralization. The basic package of new legislative and regulatory documents has been worked out, which envisages radical changes and systemic reforms, decentralization of power - transfer from the executive bodies to local self-government bodies of a considerable part of powers, resources and responsibilities. A number of reform changes have been identified, which may lead to the expected institutional, organizational and structural-functional changes of the existing public health management system in Ukraine and changes in the individual functional characteristics of the entities of this system. The differences between medical reforms in terms of administrative reform, the role of UTC in this process, in relation to a number of other European countries are considered. On this basis, possible options for the development of events in the context of territorial governance of these processes in the system of health in Ukraine have been proposed. In order to continue scientific research in this direction, the next stage of the evolution of the formation and adoption of appropriate management decisions in the UTC is to consider the cooperation of the UTC in the creation of joint infrastructure medical facilities, their governing bodies, implementation of projects of activity, financing and maintenance.
IntroductionHealth is the foundation of an engaged and happy life, and modern humans have been the fortunate beneficiaries of great advances in medical technology (Collins, 2015). With each new technology, more clues become available to decipher the problems that plague our well-being. The advent of individualized information from cheaper genome sequencing, the Internet of
The issue of hospital autonomy has aroused considerable international interest since the mid-1990âs, especially with regard to its linkage to governmental decentralization processes and reform of the health ïŹeld. Non-proïŹt hospitals have increasingly been obliged to become more autonomous as they compete for funding with private institutions. Objective: to understand how autonomy expresses itself through key management processes in non-proïŹt and for-proïŹt hospitals both in MedellĂn, the second largest city of Colombia, and its metropolitan area. Different institutional factorsâpolitical, administrative and economicâinïŹuencing autonomy are examined. Methods: a grounded theory method was used, consisting of semi-structured interviews with managers in six hospitals. Results: ïŹndings suggest that autonomy is perceived more as an ideal to aspire to, which would enable the hospital management to make free decisions, providing services in a manner that ensures ïŹnancial sustainability. In practical terms, however, the degree of administrative and ïŹnancial autonomy is circumscribed by both internal organizational factors associated with hospitals characteristics and external factors associated with institutional environment.