NRU :: Browsing by Author "Nabukenya, Josephine"

Browsing by Author "Nabukenya, Josephine"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 20

Beyond Monitoring Functionality to Results Evaluation of eHealth interventions: Development and Validation of an eHealth evaluation framework
(Health Informatics Journal, 2022) Ashaba, Justus; Nabukenya, Josephine
Evidencing eHealth interventions, benefits generates data as a basis for assessing whether observed changes in behavior, processes or healthcare outcomes can be attributed to the eHealth interventions. Generating such evidence requires the use of frameworks or some other type of organizing schemes to help in guiding the process and making sense of eHealth systems and the findings. The frameworks available in literature do not clearly guide on how to monitor eHealth implementation and evaluate eHealth implementation results. This study aimed to develop and validate an eHealth evaluation framework to guide the process of monitoring eHealth implementations and evaluation of eHealth results in terms of outcomes and impact on healthcare in developing countries. The Design Science Research Methodology was followed to conduct this study. Recommendations from an eHealth evaluation exploratory study in Uganda and other eHealth evaluation literature formed key inputs into the design and development of the framework. The framework consists of a generic reference model with eHealth monitoring and evaluation dimensions, performance indicators, and guidelines on how to conduct eHealth monitoring and evaluation. The eHealth evaluation framework received high acceptance (>80%) as regards its fitness for purpose during its validation.
A Collaboration Support Environment for Decision Enhancement in Business Process Improvement
(Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg., 2011) Amiyo, Mercy; Nabukenya, Josephine
Continuous Business Process Improvement (BPI) in light of increased business process agility demand necessitates continuous process analysis and exploration of several improvement alternatives. These activities are knowledge intensive thus require multi-disciplinary skills. Furthermore, the cross-cutting nature of business processes as a result of having several people working on related activities in order to attain business goals necessitates collaboration among stakeholders in any business process improvement effort. However current suites provide limited to no support for this kind of collaboration especially in the decision process involved. In light of this, we designed a decision enhancement studio environment consisting of 4 suites to support collaboration, business process analysis and dissemination of information in order to enhance group decision making and achieve business process agility. Evaluation results from testing sessions at two organisations show that the BPI alternative exploration collaboration process supported by the analysis tools and group support systems provides a BPI decision enhancement studio which is a suitable environment to generate and select a BPI alternative. The BPI Decision enhancement studio is thus useable and useful for collaboration support in the BPI decision process.
Combining Case Study, Design Science and Action Research Methods for Effective Collaboration Engineering Research Efforts
(IEEE., 2012) Nabukenya, Josephine
Collaboration Engineering (CE) is a new and growing field of research and practice which involves the designing of recurring collaboration processes that are meant to cause predictable and success among organizations' recurring mission-critical collaborative tasks. In pursuing a CE research effort (scientific research into the designing and evaluation of CE processes), collaboration engineers follow a five ways model. Among these ways is the way of working framework that describes structured design methods. In the CE context, the way of working defines the design activities of the CE approach. As such it points to the need to use a research methodology in order to measure the effectiveness of CE research efforts. This article therefore provides a combined research methodology that can be used to determine the effectiveness of a CE research effort. In establishing the combination, we are guided by an overview of selected research methods, with an assessment of their applicability to CE. The primary examples used show that a combined research methodology can indeed support validating CE research efforts' effectiveness.
A Conceptual Model for Adaptation of eHealth Standards by Low and Middle-Income Countries
(11th Health Informatics in Africa Conference (HELINA 2018), 2018) Egwar, Andrew Alunyu; Nabukenya, Josephine
Electronic health (ehealth) is the use of information and communication technology to support healthcare. It is used to driving efforts to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) particularly “good health and well-being for all”. Nonetheless, just like other technologies, ehealth has rapidly gained ground in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) although with scanty government intervention. In fact, governments in LMICs have only lately developed ehealth strategies.Much as ehealth offers the promise for improved and affordable healthcare and service delivery, its success is still dependent on the specifications (standards) to support interoperability and information exchange. Regrettably, standardization efforts in LMICs are greatly curtailed by resource constraints. We reviewed literature on ehealth standardisation in LMICs using four African countries as our case studies. The objective of the study was to explore the challenges of ehealth standards development and or adoption by LMICs and posit that adaptation of existing international ehealth standards is a better option for LMICs. Qualitative analysis was used to derive key themes.Our study findings indicate several challenges to ehealth standardization in LMICs including delayed standardisation efforts and unregulated penetration of ehealth, slight industry involvement, inadequate funding for the standardisation process, insufficient human resources, less to none participation in the international standards development process, and inadequate technical infrastructure for standards participation among others.This study recommends adaptation of international ehealth standards to local context of individual LMICs to help streamline both patient data and health information sharing. To achieve this, we developed the ehealth standards adaptation model. The model offers better opportunity to fast-track ehealth standardisation efforts in LMICs, as such creating an enabling platform for ehealth systems interoperability and support for health information exchange.
Decision Enhancement and Improving Business Process Agility
(In 6th Annual International Conference on Computing and ICT Research, 2010) Amiyo, Mercy; Nabukenya, Josephine; Sol, Henk G.
Achieving Business process agility requires organisations to be able to identify change in their business environment and respond promptly. In addition, they should be able to identify internal and external drivers for improvement. Business Process Management (BPM) suites have thus been developed to support the business process lifecycle by enabling timely changes to be made on process models. However, most BPM suites give little attention to the decision process that takes place when analyzing a business process and deciding on how to improve it. This research therefore proposes to develop a platform (Studio) that will provide an interactive environment to enhance the decision process involved in coming up with alternative solutions on how to improve the business process in response to changes, and identified internal and external drivers for improvement. The design science research method that emphasizes the ‘utility’ of developed artifacts is followed during this research.
Enhancing Flexibility in Clinical Trials using Workflow Management Systems
(In CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 2014) Murungi, Albert; Nabukenya, Josephine
In the medical environment, clinical research has been predominantly paper-based. The Case Report Form (CRF) is an example of paper-based tools used in documenting clinical trials. A clinical trial can be understood to be a business process. This also means that automating the clinical trial can be referred to as a workflow process. In this research, we seek to automate the clinical trial in order to support the medical practitioners to ably translate their natural language format including CRFs using a workflow system. However we also address the need for flexibility in workflow models in the clinical trials that operate under specific guidelines in form of protocols. To attain the required level of flexibility in clinical trial workflow models, we use the constraint-based modeling language. The results from the validation indicate that the designed workflow modeling framework meets the required level of flexibility with respect to its usefulness and usability.
An Exploratory Study on the Evaluation of eHealth Interventions in Uganda: Practices, Challenges and Insights
(2020) Nabukenya, Josephine; Ashaba, Justus
The application of information and communication technology is becoming more popular in healthcare management evidencing improvement of effectiveness, access, quality, and efficiency of the healthcare systems. With increased investment and implementation of eHealth across the world, there is a need to evidence its value. That is, its evaluation is required in order to get the most benefits out of them. To this end, this research study investigates the practices, challenges, and insights regarding the evaluation of eHealth implementations in Uganda.A qualitative approach was employed to conduct the study investigation with key eHealth implementers in Uganda considered as respondents to establish an understanding of their perspectives with respect to ehealth evaluation practices and challenges faced, as well as to derive insights from these perspectives in relation to the World Health Organization (WHO) understanding of digital health evaluation. Results show that Uganda has implemented various eHealth initiatives; however less to none evaluation is undertaken, as it is not a key activity with most of the eHealth implementers. The focus is put on monitoring the ehealth initiatives’ functionality and adoption rather than their outcome and impact.Accordingly, the study recommends the need for an evaluation framework following the WHO global digital health evaluation framework guidelines to elucidate the notion of evaluation, its characteristics, and measurement indicators regards the outcome and impact of ehealth implementations in healthcare and service delivery for Uganda’s health system.
Incident Response Planning Using Collaboration Engineering Process Development and Validation
(Journal of Information System Security, 2008) Davis, Alanah J.; Kamal, Mehruz; Schoonover, Terrance V.; Nabukenya, Josephine; Vreede, Gert-Jan de
Many organizations have plans for incident response strategies as; An initial version of this research was presented at the Inaugural Workshop on Information Security and Assurance (WISA): Special Interest Group on Information System Security (SIGSEC) Workshop 2006, Milwaukee, Wisconsin,December 10.part of their contingency planning process. Of particular interest is the fact that an Incident Response Plan (IRP) is not created by a single individual as it requires the inputs and contributions from a range of organizational experts.However, orchestrating the efforts of a group of experts to produce a comprehensive IRP in a short time-frame can be a challenge. Despite IRP being an essential ingredient in conjuring security planning procedures in organizations, extensive literature reviews have revealed that there are no collaborative processes in place for such a crucial activity. This is where the contribution of this study is apparent. This study proposes a design for a facilitated incident response planning process using technology such as group support systems (GSS). Three sessions were conducted and an analysis of the sessions revealed that the facilitated IRP process design held up strongly in terms of goal attainment and session participant satisfaction. Future research implications entail devising an all-encompassing integrative general approach that would be applicable to any form of corporate security development planning process.
On the Goodness of Fit of Parametric and Non‑Parametric Data Mining Techniques: The Case of Malaria Incidence Thresholds in Uganda
(Health and Technology, 2021) Bbosa, Francis Fuller; Nabukenya, Josephine; Nabende, Peter; Wesonga, Ronald
To identify which data mining technique (parametric or non-parametric) best fits the predictions on imbalanced malaria incidence dataset. The researchers compared parametric techniques in form of naïve Bayes and logistic regression against non-parametric techniques in form of support vector machines and artificial neural networks and their goodness of fit and prediction was assessed using 10-fold and 5-fold cross-validation on an independent validation dataset set to determine which model best fits the predictions on imbalanced malaria incidence dataset. The 10-fold cross-validation outperformed the 5-fold cross-validation in all performance metrics with the naïve Bayes classifier attaining accuracy of 69% with a sensitivity of 90.9%, a specificity of 55.6%, a precision of 55.6% and F-measure score of 69.0%, the logistic regression achieved an accuracy of 65.5% with a sensitivity of 83.3%, a specificity of 52.9%, a precision of 55.6% and F-measure score of 66.7%, the support vector machines achieved an accuracy of 82.8% with a sensitivity of 88.2%, a specificity of 75.0%, a precision of 83.3%, and F-measure score of 85.7% whereas the artificial neural networks registered an accuracy of 89.7% with a sensitivity of 94.1%, a specificity of 83.3%, a precision of 88.9%, and F-measure score of 91.4%. Non-parametric data mining techniques in form of artificial neural networks and support vector machines outperformed the parametric data mining technique in form of naïve Bayes in making predictions emanating from imbalanced malaria incidence dataset on account of registering higher F-measure values of 91.4% and 85.7% respectively.
Reliability of Predictions Using Hybrid Models: The Case of Malaria Incidence Rates in Uganda
(Journal of Health Informatics in Africa, 2020) Nabende, Peter; Bbosa, Francis Fuller; Wensonga, Ronald; Nabukenya, Josephine
Background and purpose: Reliability of estimates emanating from predictive independent data mining techniques is a complex problem. This could be attributed to cross-cutting weaknesses of individual techniques such as collinearity due to high dimensionality of attributes in a dataset, biasedness due to under fitting and over fitting of data as well as noise accumulation due to outliers and thus affecting the reliability of predictions emanating from these models. This study thus aimed at developing a hybrid data mining technique for predicting reliable malaria incidence rate thresholds. Methods: The decision tree and naïve Bayes classifiers were used to build a hybrid prediction model. Results of the developed hybrid model were compared with independent data mining models using 10- fold cross-validation on a previously unlearned data set. Accuracy, F-measure and the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC) were the key performance metrics used to evaluate the generalizability of the hybrid model in comparison to the independent models. Results: Findings revealed that the hybrid classifier attained an accuracy of 79.3% and an F-measure score of 84.2%, the naïve Bayes classifier achieved accuracy and F-measure value of 69% while the decision tree classifier registered an accuracy of 72.4% and an F-measure score of 80%. Conclusions: The developed hybrid model outperformed both independent decision tree and naïve Bayes models. Hence merging several independent homogeneous predictive data mining techniques enhances the accuracy of the estimates leading to reliable estimates.
A Repeatable Collaboration Process for Exploring Business Process Improvement Alternatives
(IEEE., 2012) Amiyo, Mercy; Nabukenya, Josephine; Sol, Henk G.
The dynamic nature of organisations has increased demand for business process agility leading to the adoption of continuous Business Process Improvement (BPI). Success of BPI projects calls for continuous process analysis and exploration of several improvement alternatives. These activities are knowledge intensive requiring multi-disciplinary skills. Coupled with the cross-cutting nature of business processes attainment of one's business goal necessitates collaboration among stakeholders in many business process improvement efforts. However the existing tools provide limited to no support for this kind of collaboration, especially in the decision processes involved. In light of this, we designed a repeatable collaboration process (CP) for BPI alternative exploration. The CP consists of two modules aimed at the generation of BPI alternatives and the selection of a BPI alternative respectively. Evaluation results from testing sessions at two organisations show that the CP provides support for the BPI generation and selection process, and is useful for BPI alternative exploration.
Repeatable Collaboration Processes for Mature Organizational Policy Making
(Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg., 2008) Nabukenya, Josephine; Bommel, Patrick van; Proper, H.A. Erik
Organizational policy making processes are complex processes in which many people are involved. Very often the results of these processes are not what the different stakeholders intended. Since policies play a major role in key decision making concerning the future of organizations, our research aims at improving the policies on the basis of collaboration.In order to achieve this goal, we apply the practice of collaboration engineering to the field of organizational policy making. We use the thinklet as a basic building block for facilitating intervention to create a repeatable pattern of collaboration among people working together towards achieving a goal. Our case studies show that policy making processes do need collaboration support indeed and that the resulting policies can be expected to improve.
A Studio Based Approach to Enhancing Decision Making in Sme Start-Up
(In 7th International Conference On Computing and ICT Research, 2011) Ejiri, Annabella Habinka; Nabukenya, Josephine; Sol, Henk G.
The start-up phase plays an important role in the success and survival of many enterprises, which greatly depends on adequate and timely services for decision making. However, deciding to startup a mining Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) is a challenging task for many entrepreneurs in Uganda. Research on SME start-up support is limitedly available. Information Communication and Technology (ICT) is envisaged to facilitate enterprise start-ups. However, there are still acknowledged defi ciencies in Uganda due to their discrete and isolated approach of technology, stakeholders and processes. There is lack of a generalized and systematic means to carrying out SME start-up that emphasizes constant communication and prioritization to support decision processes. Hence, this design science research aims to enhance ill-structured mining SME start-up decision processes with a decision enhancement studio. This studio consists of services for participants in an interactive environment to enhance the enterprise start-up decision processes by doing an analysis of the decision alternatives. This paper presents a design of the decision enhancement studio for mining SME start-ups. The studio is based on the requirements derived from literature and an exploratory study in Uganda. The future research will be dedicated to the implementation, evaluation, and refi nement of the decision enhancement studio for mining enterprise start-ups.
A Systematic Approach to Requirements Engineering Process Improvement in Small and Medium Enterprises: An Exploratory Study
(Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011) Kabaale, Edward; Nabukenya, Josephine
Requirements Engineering (RE) studies have demonstrated that requirements errors affect the quality of software developed, making software requirements critical determinants of software quality. Requirements Engineering Process Improvement (REPI) models have been provided by different authors to improve the RE process. However, little success has been achieved in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) software companies especially in transitional countries such as Uganda. This study reports on an exploratory study which provides insights into current RE practices in four Ugandan SME software companies, critical success factors and challenges that impede REPI. As a result a Systematic Approach to REPI has been designed following the design science approach. It provides guidelines and steps for SMEs in improving their RE processes.
A Systematic Approach to Requirements Engineering Process Improvement in Small and Medium Enterprises: An Exploratory Study
(Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg., 2011) Kabaale, Edward; Nabukenya, Josephine
Requirements Engineering (RE) studies have demonstrated that requirements errors affect the quality of software developed, making software requirements critical determinants of software quality. Requirements Engineering Process Improvement (REPI) models have been provided by different authors to improve the RE process. However, little success has been achieved in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) software companies especially in transitional countries such as Uganda. This study reports on an exploratory study which provides insights into current RE practices in four Ugandan SME software companies, critical success factors and challenges that impede REPI. As a result a Systematic Approach to REPI has been designed following the design science approach. It provides guidelines and steps for SMEs in improving their RE processes.
A Theory-Driven Design Approach to Collaborative Policy Making Processes
(IEEE., 2009) Nabukenya, Josephine; Bommel, Patrick van; Proper, H. A. (Erik)
In this paper, we consider improving collaborative policy making processes. We suggest Collaboration Engineering (CE) as an approach that can be useful in enhancing these processes. However, CE needs a theoretical basis to guide the design. This basis is provided by the quality dimensions and the causal theory. We therefore present a theory that provides an understanding of what makes good policies in policy making. This understanding should lead to design choices that should be taken into account to design quality collaborative policy making processes.To determine the quality dimensions of good policies, we use field exploratory studies and literature in the policy making domain research. Furthermore, we consider cause and effect relationships for these quality dimensions to derive the theory.
Towards a Digital Health Curriculum for Health Workforce for the African Region
(Researchsquare, 2019) Munene, Derrick; Alunyu, Andrew Egwar; Nabukenya, Josephine
Digital technologies are fast gaining space in health. A skilled workforce is required to use existing and emerging technologies that support healthcare. However, existing medical informatics curriculum from the USA, UK, and African regions reveal gaps in the required competencies for a digital health worker, especially for the African region. Therefore, the aim of this study was to identify the need for and suggest a structure of the digital health curriculum for the African region.The study retrieved articles published in English between 2000 and march of 2019 from PubMed Central,Google Scholar, and Biomedical Central. Only 39 that addressed any form of pre-service and or in-service training of the digital health workers were included in the review. In addition, 8 national ehealth strategies and 13 medical informatics curricula from the USA, UK, and African regions were reviewed to determine the gaps and suggest a structure of the Digital Health curriculum suitable for the African region. Results Many countries in the African region have developed ehealth strategies that clearly highlight the need to train the DH workforce.Results showed knowledge gaps of a communicator, a collaborator, a professional technologist, an advocate, and a manager required of digital health workers in the African region. However, existing digital/health informatics programmes in the region lack balanced course programmes to develop these core competencies. Besides, the corresponding online training is modeled after the traditional face-to-face training, thus limiting the opportunity for in-service health workers. Validation of the Lesotho curriculum confirmed only 10 modules are suitable to develop a rounded digital health worker (particularly health leaders) for the African region.Since it is important to develop the competencies consistent with the local health systems to realize the full benefits of ehealth technologies, the African region needs to bridge their human resource gaps. Thus, African countries need to first develop or adopt a digital health worker competency framework and then reorganize their national health training curriculum to ensure a standardized/universal ehealth curriculum for training the digital health workforce. Future works will assess the DH worker competencies and expected outcomes for the African region.
Towards Adoption of Standards for Communication Infrastructure/Technologies in Healthcare Systems in LMICs: Theories, Practice and Evaluation
(In HEALTHINF, 2020) Egwar, Andrew Alunyu; Ssekibuule, Richard; Nabukenya, Josephine
While electronic health offers great promise to improve healthcare in low and middle-income countries (LMICs), the communication infrastructure/technologies (CI/T) requires standards to improve the current state of none to limited interoperability. This study reviewed theories that inform the assessment of the health system’s readiness to adopt ehealth CI/T standards. The study involved a scoping review of published articles reporting adoption to the use of ICT, technologies, and standards in health. Articles published in English between 2012-2019 were identified through PubMed Central and Google Scholar. Also, grey literature from websites of WHO, standards development organisations and Uganda’s Ministry of Health were searched. Data extraction involved coding to identify key themes that inform the readiness of health systems to adopt standards for eHealth CI. Of the 3,817 published articles, only 32 met the inclusion criteria. 17 grey literature was also included in our discussion. Results identified determinants for eHealth CI/T and that concepts from the technology adoption theories can be used as metrics to assess readiness to adopt standards for ehealth CI/T. The metrics for drivers to adopt standards were higher than inhibitors in Uganda’s health system. The metrics will lead to the development of a readiness assessment framework.
User participation in ERP Implementation: A Case-based Study
(International Journal of Computer Applications Technology and Research, 2015) Matende, Samwel; Ogao, Patrick; Nabukenya, Josephine
Information Systems (IS), such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, are being developed and used in organizations to achieve their business goals and to enhance organizational effectiveness. The effect of user participation on successful systems development and implementation of ERP systems continues to be an area of interest to researchers. Common understanding has been that extensive user participation is not only important, but absolutely essential to system success. Even with this understanding of user participation as one of the critical factor in successful IS development and implementation, empirical studies have been unable to conclusively link user participation to systems success. This paper uses a private university as a case study to examine the role played by user participation in the implementation of an ERP system. In order to achieve its objective, this study adopted a mixed method where both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used in the collection of data. The results of the study reveal that user participation has a positive impact on the likelihood of ERP system success, user participation by choice is the best, user participation leads to better understanding of system requirements, the more participation the more the satisfied the users are, and participation builds support for the system during implementation. From our results we conclude that user participation in ERP system implementation is critical for successful implementation.
Using Data Analytics to Strengthen Monitoring and Surveillance of Routine Immunization Coverage for Children under One Year in Uganda
(In HEALTHINF, 2021) Nantongo, Bartha Alexandra; Nabukenya, Josephine; Nabende, Peter
Immunization coverage is a traditional key performance indicator that enables stakeholders to monitor child health, investigate gaps, and take remedial actions. It is continuously challenged by validity due to the neglect of unstructured data and process indicators that track small changes/milestones. While empirical evidence indicates digitalized immunization systems establish coverage from structured data, renowned administrative and household survey estimates are often inaccurate/untimely. Government instituted awareness, accessibility, and results-based performance approaches, but stakeholders are challenged by accurate monitoring of performance against Global Vaccination Action Plan coverage targets. This heightens inappropriate strategy implementation leading to persistent low coverage and declining trends. There is scanty literature substantiating the essence of comprehensive immunization indicators in monitoring evidence-based and timely interventions. For this reason, health workers failed to appreciate immunization process indicators and monitoring role. The study aims at developing a real-time immunization coverage monitoring framework that supports evidence-based strategy implementation using prescriptive analytics. The envisaged artifact analyzes a variety of data and monitors immunization performance against comprehensive indicators. It is a less resource-demanding strategy that prompts accurate and real-time insights to support intervention implementation decisions. This study will follow an explanatory research approach by first collecting quantitative data and later qualitative for in-depth analysis.

Browsing by Author "Nabukenya, Josephine"

Results Per Page

Sort Options