Integrating Digital Innovation Mechanisms in Digital Infrastructures: The Case of Digital Remote Care

Digital innovation (DIN) is crucial for managing the growth of resource use in the hospital sector and for providing citizens with services aligned with the requirements of the modern world. DIN includes the co-creation of novel services, such as digital remote care (DRC) solutions. The healthcare sector, with a plethora of applications, is an example of a large digital infrastructure. Our study aims to explore how DRC initiatives can be integrated in large-scale digital infrastructures. Our in-depth case study, which explores 72 different DRC trajectories at 9 hospital health trusts in Norway, reveals the dynamic interplay among 3 key mechanisms - idealistic entrepreneurship, anchoring and remote infrastructure. Our contribution to the DIN literature is a model that shows the interplay among these key mechanisms, which increases the innovation pace, improves the innovations' scalability and provides a robust organisation that constantly implements innovations. As a contributions to DRC practice, lessons learned to speed up the innovation pace are offered: (1) Create a DRC organisational structure. (2) Ensure financial predictability. (3) secure anchoring upward in the governance structure. (4) Make the remote infrastructure appropriate for integration with the current digital infrastructure. (5) Advocate the success across the organisation to spur others to innovate.

How does digital infrastructure affect residents' healthcare expenditures? Evidence from Chinese microdata

Healthcare expenditure is only one of the heavy burdens that families face in developing countries. Current research mainly focuses on analyzing the effects of financial policy. There is a lack of studies that examine the understanding and assessment of the impact of digital infrastructure on this issue. In this study, we used the Broadband China policy as a quasi-natural experiment to explore the impact of digital infrastructure on residents' healthcare expenditures in China. Using the differences-in-differences (DID) model and micro-survey data, we found that digital infrastructure has a positive impact on reducing the burden of healthcare expenditure in China. Our findings indicate that residents in cities can save up to 18.8% on healthcare expenses following large-scale digital infrastructure construction. Through mechanism analysis, we found that digital infrastructure reduces residents' healthcare expenditures by improving both commercial insurance availability and the healthcare efficiency of residents. In addition, the effects of digital infrastructure on reducing healthcare expenditure are more pronounced among middle-aged individuals, those with low levels of education, and those with low incomes, which indicates this digital construction wave helps bridge the social gap between the poor and the rich. This study provides compelling evidence of the positive impact of digital society construction on social health and wellbeing.

Governing with health code: Standardising China's data network systems during COVID-19

Noting the infrastructural turn in platform studies, the article conceives China's health code system, Jian Kang Ma (JKM), deployed to manage the COVID-19 crisis as a new social infrastructure that manifests the symbolic and material power of the Party State. Using the platform walkthrough method and documentary inquiry, we unpack the structures of platform governance and identify actors of the power to appreciate the socio-political dynamics of platform algorithms. JKM's structural power is not monolithic in the name of the Party State but supports a process of structuration that operates across multiple actors, administrative bodies and, governing layers. JKM has centralised data systems through the building of a nationwide algorithmic standard of COVID-19 governance. JKM typified the political dynamics of deterritorialisation, a reference to the state's governing mindset of eradicating local variants of policy implementation and governing autonomy in China. The removal of local power in pandemic administration has led to the production of a unified national subject. Such a comprehensive approach begs for greater nuance and sophisticated knowledge about those indigenous logics that platforms and algorithms operate and are embedded in, thus contributing to de-westernising platform studies.

Student Experience and Its Relationship with Campus Mental Well-Being

This research offers a generalizable Campus Mental Well-being Sense of Coherence Framework for improving student experience by classifying SES variables according to Antonovsky's salutogenic health logic (GRRs and SRRs) and by mapping these variables to the Information Infrastructure to Experience Framework (IEF).

Development and Influencing Factors of International Trade in Digitally Deliverable Services

Introduction

International trade in digitally deliverable services has been developing rapidly in recent years, especially during pandemics. However, the growth rate and scale differ among regions and countries. To promote the growth and bridge the divide of global trade in digitally deliverable services, we provide feasible policy suggestions in this paper.

Methods

Based on panel data of 33 countries' digitally deliverable service trade from 2005 to 2020, this study analyzes the development trends and influencing factors of international trade in digital-global service trade.

Results

The development of digitally deliverable services in developed countries is far ahead, while in emerging economies such as China and India, it is growing at a high speed. Digital infrastructure; human capital; and science, technology, and innovation capacity have a significant impact on the digitally deliverable trade of countries with the level of STI playing the most important influence. Further, heterogeneity analysis shows that human capital and STI capacity are more sensitive to the digitally deliverable trade of middle-income countries than to the impact of high-income countries, and the contribution of population in middle-income countries is more pronounced.

Conclusion

As the proportion of digital trade in global trade continues to increase, the role of digital service trade in countries' sustainable development is becoming more prominent. To cope with such opportunities and challenges, countries, especially developing countries, should actively increase digital infrastructure construction, improve talent training, vigorously develop digital technology, and enhance their innovation capacity.

Programming Nature as Infrastructure in the Smart Forest City

Smart cities typically involve the digitalization of transport and buildings, energy and communications. Yet urban natures are also becoming increasingly digitalized, whether through processes of monitoring, automation, mitigation, or augmentation. This text considers what "splintering urbanisms" materialize through programming nature as infrastructure. By focusing specifically on smart urban forests, I suggest that the management logics of smart infrastructures attempt to program and transform vegetation and its ecologies into uniquely efficient and responsive urban organisms. In the process, these programs of efficiency have the potential to exacerbate extractive economies and social inequalities that amplify and materialize through the "Internet of nature."

Editors between Support and Control by the Digital Infrastructure - Tracing the Peer Review Process with Data from an Editorial Management System

Many journals now rely on editorial management systems, which are supposed to support the administration and decision making of editors, while aiming at making the process of communication faster and more transparent to both reviewers and authors. Yet, little is known about how these infrastructures support, stabilize, transform or change existing editorial practices. Research suggests that editorial management systems as digital infrastructures are adapted to the local needs at scholarly journals and reflect main realms of activities. Recently, it has been established that in a minimal case, the peer review process is comprised of postulation, consultation, decision and administration. By exploring process generated data from a publisher’s editorial management system, we investigate the ways by which the digital infrastructure is used and how it represents the different realms of the process of peer review. How does the infrastructure support, strengthen or restrain editorial agency for administrating the process? In our study, we investigate editorial processes and practices with their data traces captured by an editorial management system. We do so by making use of the internal representation of manuscript life cycles from submission to decision for 14,000 manuscripts submitted to a biomedical publisher. Reconstructing the processes applying social network analysis, we found that the individual steps in the process have no strict order, other than could be expected with regard to the software patent. However, patterns can be observed, as to which stages manuscripts are most likely to go through in an ordered fashion. We also found the different realms of the peer review process represented in the system, some events, however, indicate that the infrastructure offers more control and observation of the peer review process, thereby strengthening the editorial role in the governance of peer review while at the same time the infrastructure oversees the editors’ performance.

COVID-19: what is not being addressed

As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases nears 27 million, there is a rush to answer (what next) and a rush to act (to solve the immediate problems of COVID-19). This paper discusses, with a specific focus on urban areas in the global South, what is missing to date from this response. That includes an identification of things that there are too much of, things that are not being done at all, and things that are unbalanced. There has been an enormous upsurge of academic research papers and opinions on COVID-19. "Technological" and "scientific" solutions tend to overshadow other approaches, even if people know that "social is important". Based on our analysis to date, our primary concern is that there is too little understanding about the importance of building dialogue, exploring collaboration and co-producing solutions. There is too little understanding as to why social and cultural responses are important, and how the recognition that they are important can be actioned.

The Effect of COVID-19 on the Hospitality Industry: The Implication for Open Innovation

The current coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has led the world toward severe socio-economic crisis and psychological distress. It has severely hit the economy; but the service sector, particularly the hospitality industry, is hard hit by it. It increases the sense of insecurity among the employees and their perception of being unemployed, adversely affecting their mental health. This research aims to contribute to the emerging debate by investigating the effect of economic crisis and non-employability on employees’ mental health through perceived job insecurity under the pandemic situation. It empirically examines the underlying framework by surveying 372 employees of the hospitality industry during COVID-19. Results indicate that perceived job insecurity mediates the relationship of fear of economic crisis, non-employability, and mental health. Furthermore, the contingency of fear of COVID-19 strengthens the indirect relationship of fear of economic crisis on mental health through perceived job insecurity. The findings will provide a new dimension to the managers to deal with the psychological factors associated with the employees’ mental health and add to the emerging literature of behavioral sciences. The study also highlights the increasing need for investment in the digital infrastructure and smart technologies for the hospitality industry.

The 21st Century Cures Act: A Competitive Apps Market and the Risk of Innovation Blocking

The 21st Century Cures Act and the recently published "final rule" define standardized methods for obtaining electronic copies of electronic health record (EHR) data through application programming interfaces. The rule is meant to create an ecosystem of reusable, substitutable apps that can be built once but run at any hospital system "without special effort." Yet, despite numerous provisions around information blocking in the final rule, there is concern that the business practices that govern EHR vendors and health care organizations in the United States could still stifle innovation. We describe potential app ecosystems that may form. We caution that misaligned incentives may result in anticompetitive behavior and purposefully limited functionality. Closed proprietary ecosystems may result, limiting the value derived from interoperability. The 21st Century Cures Act and final rule are an exciting step in the direction of improved interoperability. However, realizing the vision of a truly interoperable app ecosystem is not predetermined.