نشریه مدیریت اطلاعات سلامت
سال هجدهم شماره 5 (پیاپی 81، آذر و دی 1400)

Applying an integration approach to green supply chain management in health care centers can improve its performance, as integration enables coordinated efforts to regulate different resources within organization and across supply chains for implementing best practices in environmental management. This study endeavors to investigate the relationship between green supply chain integration and sustainable performance in healthcare centers of Yazd, Iran.

The participants of this quantitative-qualitative study were 10 specialists and 59 experts from the supply chain of public hospitals in Yazd. Initially, library studies, and content analysis were conducted, and the initial indicators were identified. Then, based on semi-structured interviews with 10 university experts and healthcare centers, these indicators were reviewed. According to the final indicators, a questionnaire was distributed among managers and health service experts of six public hospitals in Yazd to evaluate the study variables. Finally, 59 questionnaires were collected and employed to analyze the data through the SmartPLS software.

The final output of the study was a model for measuring the relationship between green supply chain integration and improving the sustainable performance of health care centers in Yazd, which will be useful for health experts to plan to improve sustainability in healthcare centers.

Supply chain integration expressed 78%, 75%, and 68% of the changes in the dimensions of sustainable social, economic, and environmental performance, respectively. In effect, the integration of the green supply chain in these centers will reduce environmental pollution, improve the social facets, and elevate the quality of services, and ultimately improve the economic performance of healthcare service centers.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced the new corona virus epidemic called coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a public health emergency with international information. In this special modeling, they specifically use the device to model diseases. The purpose of this study was to analyze the spread of COVID-19 in Iran using the Susceptible-Infected-Removed (SIR) tool and to determine the R0 identification rate of infected individuals in the community.

In this study, first the disease progression trend was investigated and then the SIR model was used to identify the R0 indicators of epidemic characteristics and some viral diseases in the programming environment. Data related to transmission of virus infection in Iran from 02/21/2020 to 10/12/2021 were selected from the GitHub source in the COVID-19 analysis.

Based on the results obtained from the SIR model, in the period of 600 days, the estimated number of infected people was 5619032, with the maximum point of this period taking place on the 47th day from the beginning of the period. On the other hand, considering the obtained values, the prevalence rate of R0 in the final three months, the spread of the disease was largely controlled, however, the prevalence rate was more than one.

Considering that significant changes have occurred since the beginning of vaccination in Iran, it can be concluded that the spread of the disease has been largely controlled, but as long as the prevalence rate is more than one, more control should be exercised.

The standard libraries seems to be essential for the use of physicians and students to provide evidence-based and quality services to patients. This study endeavored to determine the proposed areas required for developing and localizing standard hospital libraries based on the texts and views of experts in the field of medical information.

This descriptive study was a survey and based on the literature review, the proposed areas for standardization and then the design of the primary extraction tool. The members of the community consisted of 8 information specialists who had expertise, background, and work experience in medical and hospital libraries. The validity of the instrument was authenticated through Content Validity Index (CVI) and Content Validity Ratio (CVR).

Given the findings, 6 areas (mission and goals, management, resources and facilities and services, librarians’ education, education to patients and their families, education of hospital and medical staff), 24 standards, and 89 initial indicators after validating were designed as a primary instrument for standardizing hospital libraries.

Hospital libraries in Iran can use standardization proposed in this study, including the indicators such as mission clarity and goals of hospital libraries, appropriate mechanisms for monitoring the organizational structure, appropriateness of the physical space for staffing hospital libraries, and other items addressed in the present study. The use of these standards seems to help improve the provision of evidence-based services by physicians and students to patients and enable them to be successful in diagnosing and treating emerging diseases such as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Online health information seeking can be related to several factors. The present study was conducted to underline the importance of two factors of uncertainty and cyberchondria.

This study was a descriptive survey in which the study population consisted of students of Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran, from different academic levels. A sample of 358 individuals was selected and 286 individuals participated in the study. The data collection instruments included three questionnaires whose reliability was recalculated in this study. The online health information seeking questionnaire with alpha of 0.81, uncertainty with 0.85, and cyberchondria with 0.86.

Findings showed that the average of online health information seeking among males was higher than in females (the difference was significant). Besides, MD and master students had a higher average than others. There was no significant difference in the mean of uncertainty and cyberchondria in terms of gender and academic levels. There was a significant relationship between online search for health information, uncertainty, and cyberchondria. Using regression, it was found that uncertainty and cyberchondria were the predictors of online search for health information.

Uncertainty and skepticism about information, as well as anxiety about facing health information (cyberchondria) increase students' online health information seeking.

This study endeavored to investigate citations to the Iranian English medical journals in Wikipedia.

This descriptive study was conducted based on citation analysis and scientometric techniques. The population included 282 English journals approved by the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education. The full title, acronym, and abbreviated title of each journal were searched on Wikipedia and Google (site search), and data analysis was conducted through the Excel software.

Wikipedia articles cited to 114 journals were approved by the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education. These journals received 1091 citations. Among which, the journal of Archives of Iranian Medicine has received the most citations from Wikipedia articles. Journals in the field of medical profession received the most citations among journals approved by the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education. Furthermore, 412 Wikipedia articles were in English. Among the Wikipedia articles, articles in the plant category have cited more to journals approved by the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education.

Iranian medical journals, by improving their popularization policies and strategies can be recognized internationally in terms of article citation and science popularization of science. In view of this, science policymakers should pay more attention to the relationship between universities and scientific journals with the public, especially Wikipedia, to generalize and popularize the science and scientific information.

Data mining seems to be a good tool for showing underlying knowledge of Medical Big Data (MBD). Understanding characteristics of data and possible challenges are the first steps of the journey. This study endeavors to inspect reasons, effects, and solutions of challenges as well as benefits of MBD mining.

In so doing, PubMed, ScienceDirect, Springer, and Google Scholar databases were scrutinized using two groups of keywords for benefits and challenges in the years 2011-202. The search language was English. Single-purpose studies were excluded and those studies that were focused on MBD mining were included. Then, challenge was examined separately and the results were categorized.

Extracted knowledge from MBD enhances quality of care. However, low-quality performance in gathering and storing the data, properties of big data, and inherent structure of medical data cause many problems for mining methods. Inconsistency, veracity, privacy, and security issues are the major challenging problems. Standardization and enhancing quality of data gathering, storing, and representing tasks are the effective problem prevention strategies. Designing and using appropriate frameworks, algorithms, and structures as well as utilizing machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques are the most effective solutions for dealing with the challenges.

MBD was appeared and expanded when the world was not ready for it. Thus, it caused many challenges for mining methods. Some of them are traceable, preventable, and manageable. However, some challenges need novel and intelligent methods that are able to handle MBD.

Evaluation of researchers has long been performed by scientific organizations, but today regarding the increase in publications and the complexity of the evaluation processes, the new approaches are employed often by using scientometric indicators. Despite diversity of evaluation indicators, they are accompanied by drawbacks that amongst them, the lack of a comprehensive indicator for multidimensional evaluation of researchers in terms of national dimensions is perhaps prominent. The major available scientometric indicators consider the number of articles of a person as well as the number of citations received of those articles as an indicator for quality of research work. The criterion of citing for measuring these indicators has led to criticisms of existing indicators. On the other hand, in Iranian educational organizations, the quality of the journal wherein the article is published is considered as one of the major criteria for evaluating researchers. The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) clearly states that journal-based metrics, such as the journal impact factor, should not be used as a substitute for the quality of research papers and evaluation of researchers, recruitment, financial decisions, or promotion of them. Moreover, according to the sixth principle of Leiden's statement, a suitable way for researcher’s evaluation is the selection of a set of possible criteria by scientific and educational institutions. In view of this, it seems indispensable to develop a national author-centered index to measure quantitatively and qualitatively the works of Iranian health researchers according to their official language, scientific and cultural needs, and various fields of health. This index can be a combination of components of current indicators but has the ability to adapt with the conditions of our country. 

Today, reference librarians of health libraries try to meet the information needs of users. To achieve this, they need strong theoretical support in this regard. However, due to lack of a unified theory, the lack of a process view of the entire reference services and also the lack of attention to how these services survive can be seen in the current theories. In this study, based on the current theories and the knowledge and experiences of the authors, a six-process conceptual framework including trust, accessibility, information needs, feedback, loyalty, and process evaluation was proposed.