Unveiling the affecting mechanism of digital transformation on total factor productivity of Chinese firms

The importance of digital transformation (DGT) for increasing productivity cannot be negated and Chinese firms are rapidly embracing the digital transformation for their sustainability. But the mechanism and impact of digital transformation on total factor productivity (TFP) of firms is still unclear and this study is intended to fill this gap using the data of 3112 listed firms of China during 2011 to 2022. We applied various econometric techniques like stepwise regression analysis, instrumental variable approach, differences in difference approach, and mediating analysis to determine the relationship between digital transformation and TFP and robustness of estimated findings. The findings indicate that DGT has a positive impact on overall TFP of firms in China while operating efficiency, cheaper costs, and a stronger capacity for innovation mediates this relationship. Moreover, it is explored that conventional information and communication technologies have not significant impact on TFP of firms. The findings of the study remain valid even applying many robustness checks and attempts to control the issue of endogeneity. To fully leverage the potential benefits of digital transformation on TFP, it is essential to focus on enhancing digital literacy and skills among the workforce. Governments and relevant stakeholders should prioritize and invest in comprehensive digital literacy and skills training programs to empower the workforce with the knowledge and expertise needed to navigate the digital age effectively.

Current Topics in Technology-Enabled Stroke Rehabilitation and Reintegration: A Scoping Review and Content Analysis

BACKGROUND

There is a worldwide health crisis stemming from the rising incidence of various debilitating chronic diseases, with stroke as a leading contributor. Chronic stroke management encompasses rehabilitation and reintegration, and can require decades of personalized medicine and care. Information technology (IT) tools have the potential to support individuals managing chronic stroke symptoms.

OBJECTIVES

This scoping review identifies prevalent topics and concepts in research literature on IT technology for stroke rehabilitation and reintegration, utilizing content analysis, based on topic modelling techniques from natural language processing to identify gaps in this literature.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

Our methodological search initially identified over 14,000 publications of the last two decades in the Web of Science and Scopus databases, which we filter, using keywords and a qualitative review, to a core corpus of 1062 documents.

RESULTS

We generate a 3-topic, 4-topic and 5-topic model and interpret the resulting topics as four distinct thematics in the literature, which we label as Robotics, Software, Functional and Cognitive. We analyze the prevalence and distinctiveness of each thematic and identify some areas relatively neglected by the field. These are mainly in the Cognitive thematic, especially for systems and devices for sensory loss rehabilitation, tasks of daily living performance and social participation.

CONCLUSION

The results indicate that IT-enabled stroke literature has focused on Functional outcomes and Robotic technologies, with lesser emphasis on Cognitive outcomes and combined interventions. We hope this review broadens awareness, usage and mainstream acceptance of novel technologies in rehabilitation and reintegration among clinicians, carers and patients.

Innovation in Chinese internet companies: A meta-frontier analysis

The innovation of a particular company benefits the whole industry when innovation technology transfers to others. Similarly, the development and innovation in internet companies influence the development and innovation of the industry. This investigation has applied a unique approach of meta-frontier analysis to estimate and analyze the innovation in internet companies in China. A unique dataset of Chinese internet companies from 2000 to 2017 has been utilized to estimate and compare the innovation over the period of study. The change in technology gap ratio (TGR) and a shift in production function have translated into innovation which was overlooked by previous studies. It is found that the production function of internet companies is moving upward in the presence of external factors such as smartphones invention, mobile internet, mobile payments, and artificial intelligence, etc. Consequently, a sudden increase in TGR is captured due to the innovation of some companies. Hence, the average TE of the industry falls caused by the increased distance of other companies form industry production function. However, the innovation advantage defused when other companies start imitating and the average TE elevates. A steady increase in the TGR index revealed that the continuous innovation-based growth of some companies lifting the production frontier upward. This provides the opportunity for other companies to imitate and provides continuous growth in the industry. This study provides a novel methodological approach to measure innovation and also provide practical implication by empirical estimation of innovation in Chinese internet companies.

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The rapid expansion in the use of information and communication technologies in the field of healthcare is a significant factor in the improvement of the population's care. For healthcare professionals, this development is accompanied by a need for the exchange and sharing of health information. Indeed, numerous questions are raised: What does the information refer to? With whom should it be shared or exchanged? How and what are the risks?

University-industry-government relations of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) universities: The perspective of the mutual information

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) universities are important bases for science and technology research and play a critical role in China’s National Innovation System. Based on the Web of Science (WoS), this article analyzes the statistics of paper published by MIIT universities and universities from across China including MIIT universities. The results are as follows: (1) Both the MIIT universities and universities nationwide in China have increased their international academic publications, and MIIT have shown a greater increase for the past decade. (2) In terms of U-I-G interaction, for UG relations, the T_ug value of MIIT universities has remained stable, while that of universities in China has become declined. For UI relations, the T_ui value of both MIIT universities and universities in China has shown steady growth. For UIG relations, MIIT universities have a greater synergistic effect of Triple Helix relationship than universities in China. (3) For more details in seven MIIT universities, universities elected into “Project 985”, including HIT, BUAA, BIT and NPU, have published more papers, and been more synergistic with government and industry (UIG relations) than other three universities, including NUAA, NUST and HEU. Based on the empirical results, we discuss our findings, and make certain suggestions regarding policy incentives, reasonable administrative system and U-I-G interaction mode, which is significant not only for Chinese universities but also for universities in other developing countries.

Capacity and willingness to use information technology for managing chronic diseases among patients: A cross-sectional study in Lahore, Pakistan

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

The information technology is a pivotal source of communication between patients and healthcare providers for managing chronic diseases. The objective of this study is to assess the capacity and willingness of patients to use information technology for managing chronic diseases.

METHODS

A descriptive, cross-sectional study design was employed. Study was conducted in six tertiary care hospitals of Lahore, Pakistan. The study population consisted of patients aged ≥18 years and diagnosed with a minimum of one chronic non-communicable disease. A structured questionnaire was administered to the study participants for data collection. SPSS was used for data analysis.

RESULTS

Among the 400 respondents, hypertension (39.5%) was the leading chronic condition followed by diabetes (27.5%). Majority of the patients owned a cell phone (90.7%) and had internet access (66.2%). Almost half of the respondents (51.0%) were willing to use text messages; whereas 78.5% and 75.7% of the respondents were reluctant to use video conference and e-mail as a source of communication with healthcare providers. Reason for unwillingness to use e-mail was the patients' desire to be directly examined by the doctor; whereas unfamiliarity with the use of text message and video conference was the major reason for not using these technologies. Logistic regression analysis revealed that interest in using e-mail to interact with specialist was more among those participants who had good self-reported health (OR = 2.579, 95%CI = 1.276-5.212, p = .008), access to internet (OR = 5.416, 95%CI = 2.777-10.564, p < .001), and those who owned a cell phone (OR = 12.944, 95%CI = 1.751-95.704, p = .012). Interest in using text messages to interact with specialist was more among participants with middle-income group (OR = 2.303, 95%CI = 1.389-3.818, p < .001), residency in close proximity to healthcare professional (OR = 3.529, 95%CI = 2.333-5.339, p < .001), access to internet (OR = 3.253, 95%CI = 2.102-5.033, p < .001) and among those who owned a cell phone (OR = 46.709, 95%CI = 6.335-344.377, p < .001). Interest in using video conference to interact with specialist was more among those participants who had access to internet (OR = 5.840, 95%CI = 2.825-12.069, p < .001) and among those who owned a cell phone (OR = 11.177, 95%CI = 1.510-82.725, p = .018).

CONCLUSION

This study concluded that nearly half of the respondents were willing to use text messages; whereas, majority was reluctant in using video conference and e-mail as a source of communication with healthcare providers. Most of the respondents who were located farther from the health care provider were willing to use video conferencing in case it could save more than 60 minutes of their time.

A Review of Implant Communication Technology in WBAN: Progress and Challenges

Over the past six decades, there has been tremendous progress made in the field of medical implant communications. A comprehensive review of the progress, current state of the art, and future direction is presented in this paper. Implanted medical devices (IMDs) are designed mainly for the purpose of diagnostic, therapeutic, and assistive applications in heathcare, active living, and sports technology. The primary target of IMDs' design revolves around reliable communications, sustainable power sources, and a high degree of miniaturization while maintaining biocompatibility to surrounding tissues adhering to the human safety limits set by appropriate guidelines. The role of the Internet of Things and intelligent data analysis in implant device networks as future research is presented in this paper. Finally, in addition to reviewing the state of the art, a novel intuitive lower bound on implant size is presented.

Engaging with change: Information and communication technology professionals' perspectives on change in the context of the 'Brexit' vote

Background

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been a key agent of change in the 21^st century. Given the role of ICT in changing society this research sought to explore the responses and attitudes to change from ICT professionals and ICT academics in dealing with the potentially far reaching political challenge triggered by the UK’s 2016 European Union Referendum and its decision to leave the European Union (referred to as Brexit). Whilst the vote was a UK based decision its ramifications have global implications and as such the research was not confined to the UK.

Methods and findings

Data was collected through a survey launched on the first working day after the Brexit referendum vote to leave the EU and kept open for four weeks. The survey contained qualitative and quantitative questions. It sought to understand the opportunities and threats that would exist post-Brexit for ICT professionals and academics triggered by the decision. The research captured a complex rich picture on ICT professionals’ responses to the potential challenge of change triggered by the Brexit vote. Immediately after the Brexit decision the research reveals uncertainties amongst ICT professionals regarding what the decision would mean, with just under half of the participants not identifying any opportunities or threats. For those who did, threats outweighed opportunities by just more than double. Whilst understanding the global possibilities and dangers, participants saw their position from national and organizational perspectives. The highest frequency coded threats related to areas outside the participants’ control and the highest frequency opportunities related to areas where there was the potential for ICT interventions. This survey is part of longitudinal piece of research. Using the same methodological approach two further surveys are planned. The second survey will be one year after Article 50 was triggered on 29 March 2017. The final survey will be one year after the UK exit from the EU, assuming this occurs.

Privacy and Security within Biobanking: The Role of Information Technology

Along with technical issues, biobanking frequently raises important privacy and security issues that must be resolved as biobanks continue to grow in scale and scope. Consent mechanisms currently in use range from fine-grained to very broad, and in some cases participants are offered very few privacy protections. However, developments in information technology are bringing improvements. New programs and systems are being developed to allow researchers to conduct analyses without distributing the data itself offsite, either by allowing the investigator to communicate with a central computer, or by having each site participate in meta-analysis that results in a shared statistic or final significance result. The implementation of security protocols into the research biobanking setting requires three key elements: authentication, authorization, and auditing. Authentication is the process of making sure individuals are who they claim to be, frequently through the use of a password, a key fob, or a physical (i.e., retinal or fingerprint) scan. Authorization involves ensuring that every individual who attempts an action has permission to do that action. Finally, auditing allows for actions to be logged so that inappropriate or unethical actions can later be traced back to their source.