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The purpose of this paper is to provide the results of a case study that examined the application of platform design to improve the integration of patient care services across the continuum of care. This paper is designed to spark discussion and encourage further research in this area.

The research in the paper involved a case study of a large health care provider in a major metropolitan area. The authors of this paper worked with directors of case management departments and other managerial personnel within the enterprise to study the case management interface services between different inpatient and outpatient facilities to examine existing processes, identify deficiencies, and to recommend improvements in case management.

The paper finds that the current case management system of the provider, as structured, was not fulfilling its potential for achieving medical quality, operational cost, or patient satisfaction. A number of areas where improvements could be made were identified, and an integrated case management approach based on modular platform design was recommended as a key approach to realize such improvements.

The paper shows that this study involves only one major provider and therefore the direct application of an integrated case management approach based on platform design to other providers would have to be further researched. However, the proposed integrated, cross‐continuum model of case management appears to be a novel way to both improve care and achieve financial cost efficiencies.

The case study in this paper demonstrates how innovative thinking and the use of techniques typically associated with “Platform architectures” can have direct application in the health care sector.

The paper shows that as health care providers are continuously working to improve the quality of care within specific areas of clinical care, improvement in the interfaces between these specific areas may also improve the quality and cost of care. This case study applies modular services design to show how the planning and delivering patient services across the entire “Continuum of care”, which includes the transfer of patients, care coordination, and medical information management can achieve that desired result.

A year ago, Annette Hamilton left Network Arts in Lewisham to manage a social firm development programme in Spain. She is bilingual and, in addition to working in mental health employment schemes, she has run her own craft business. Annette's adventure has provided an ideal opportunity to see how the ideals of skills transfer and mobility of labour in Europe can work out in practice.

The purpose of this case study is to highlight the importance of empowering and meeting the “higher needs” of the very old, which prolong a fulfilling life. Frailty in old age need not be feared and abhorred if society would accept that all of us need to live our lives as we wish until the end, and value those who assist us to do this. With the right attitudes to ageing and death and with the appropriate investment for a seamless care system that listens to, and functions well for those who need it, old age should be as enriching as any other time in life.

Personal narrative of the author's parents ageing, this paper gives the background and personality of the frail older person and his wife, that contextualises the challenges they face in his very old age. The professional and personal experiences of the author as she tackles the obstacles to support them are drawn from her career in social care with memories from diaries written, as she accompanies her parents on their journey of physical and mental deterioration along with a quest for realising what they have and making the most of it.

Given how challenging this journey is for an informed family, the implications are that in 2013 our “civilised” society still misunderstands the special and complex needs of frail older people, devalues them, and writes them off with institutionalised, rigid attitudes and services instead of working creatively to improve their lives. The paper observes how deeply rooted this is in us all.

The combination of the author's background in social work and expertise in health and care with living so close to relatively unusually long-lived parents, offers a unique insight into why it is so challenging to achieve quality of life for very older people needing care and should be of interest to CCGs, social services departments, older people's care providers and carer and user organisations.

This review aims to focus on the role of evidence in informing policy and practice in health and social care integration.

Following discussion of the importance of defining the terms that are being used, the review addresses UK policy and practice developments in respect of integrated health and social care over the last two decades. It explores the extent to which these accord with the available evidence on effective strategies.

The review demonstrates that the focus in delivering integrated care should be on the local systems and cultures that can deliver positive outcomes for individuals. Structural change will not guarantee integrated care and diverts from the detail of local implementation that needs to be achieved. Current developments in both Scotland and England have some promise of delivering enduring progress.

The review provides a synthesis of key bodies of evidence and allows comparison between different polities within the UK.

The case was developed from both primary and secondary sources. The secondary data was sourced from annual reports, industry reports, company websites and news articles. Primary sources included visiting the Club Mahindra Resorts located at different places, interacting with staff and local people, visiting their corporate office to interact with the CEO. The case has also been tested in a classroom.

This case deals with challenges faced by a vacation ownership (VO) company, Mahindra Holidays Resorts India Ltd in articulating the organizational culture of its flagship brand “Club Mahindra.” Club Mahindra had emerged as the major VO company in India in the past two decades on the back of its core product – a 25-year membership plan. The company was growing its offerings to its customers in an environment of changing customer preferences.

This case provides the students an opportunity to learn the organizational culture model. The students are expected to use the information provided in the case and exhibits to support their analysis with the primary objective to extract lessons about organization culture to leverage it as a tool to enhance customer satisfaction. Other objectives include understanding the changing business environment and modeling employee behavior during a crisis. Furthermore, the students are expected to validate the model using the artifacts from the crisis management at the Club Mahindra Resorts at Madikeri and Ashtamudi to understand the dynamics of change and the role of culture in organizational success.

At the MBA level, the case can be used to teach the topic of Organization Culture in the core course, Organization Behavior in the first-year curriculum, which is at the macro-level, with “organization” as the unit of analysis. It can also be used to teach the same topic with a stronger application orientation in the One Year Executive Education Program for middle-to-senior managers or short-term Executive Education Modules designed for a similar cohort.

This paper hypothesizes that a system of accounting underpinned by attributions of harm has the capacity, more than conventional accounting, to elicit empathic concern among managers, by becoming the mediating link between organisational responsibility and concern for the “other”.

The literature-inspired reflections presented in this paper stem from the theoretical perspective of care-ethics supported by the notions of empathy and proximity to highlight how the propensity to empathise is mediated by attributions of harm and responsibility.

The proposed “new” accounting, coined “connected accounting” is proposed because of its potential to make visible the neglected and marginalised segments of society that presently lie hidden in conventional accounting. Accounting for the effects of organisational practice on people and society is expected to strengthen the care-ethic relationship between key actors – managers, accountants and stakeholders.

The paper is limited by the assumptions that underpin the conceptualised notion of “Connected Accounting”.

This essay introduces to the accounting ethics literature the role of emotion and empathic care in accounting, including sociological aspects of accounting reflecting the ongoing quest for understanding the processes and consequences of accounting as a social practice.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the antecedents of continued usage intentions in the connected devices ecosystem in health care by analyzing the users' and physicians' expectations in a new ecosystem where one prefers to connect digitally rather than physically.

This is a unique study in which data was collected from 242 doctors and 215 end-users to gauge the expectations from the connected devices in health care. Further, these responses were hypothesised using UTAUT-2 and ECT theories to analyze general users’ and professional users’ or doctors’ expectations for continued usage in connected devices ecosystem in the health-care ecosystem.

Performance expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions and price value emerged as significant predictors of satisfaction in both user groups. But habit and hedonic motivation reflected an insignificant impact on user satisfaction. Surprisingly, effort expectancy emerged as a significant factor for end-user satisfaction, and this became insignificant for professional user satisfaction. Satisfaction was positively related to continued usage for both user groups, and app quality has a positive impact on all the predictors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comparative study to understand the factors which influence consumer behavior leading to a holistic model and can be imbibed for creating a better customer experience in an era where we are more comfortable connecting digitally rather than physically.

This study has used the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology-2 model and expectation confirmation theory to analyze the key factors influencing the intentions for continued usage of devices in the Internet of Medical Devices setup.

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) and virtual visits have the potential to transform care delivery and outcomes but require intentional planning around how these technologies contribute to integrated care. Since maturity models are useful frameworks for understanding current performance and motivating progress, the authors developed a model describing the features of RPM that can advance integrated care.

This work was led by St. Joseph's Health System Centre for Integrated Care in collaboration with clinical and programme leads and frontline staff offering RPM services as part of Connected Health Hamilton in Ontario, Canada. Development of the maturity model was informed by a review of existing telehealth maturity models, online stakeholder meetings, and online interviews with clinical leads, programme leads, and staff.

The maturity model comprises 4 maturity levels and 17 sub-domains organised into 5 domains: Technology, Team Organisation, Programme Support, Integrated Information Systems, and Performance and Quality. An implementation pillars checklist identifies additional considerations for sustaining programmes at any maturity level. Finally, the authors apply one of Connected Health Hamilton's RPM programmes to the Team Organisation domain as an example of the maturity model in action.

This work extends previous telehealth maturity models by focussing on the arrangement of resources, teams, and processes needed to support the delivery of integrated care. Although the model is inspired by local programmes, the model is highly transferable to other RPM programmes.

The aim of this paper is to identify some of the challenges that need to be addressed to accelerate the deployment and adoption of smart health technologies for ubiquitous healthcare access. The paper also explores how internet of things (IoT) and big data technologies can be combined with smart health to provide better healthcare solutions.

The authors reviewed the literature to identify the challenges which have slowed down the deployment and adoption of smart health.

The authors discussed how IoT and big data technologies can be integrated with smart health to address some of the challenges to improve health-care availability, access and costs.

The results of this paper will help health-care designers, professionals and researchers design better health-care information systems.

Connected Health is an emerging and rapidly developing field never before witnessed across the healthcare sector. It has the potential to transform healthcare service systems by increasing its safety, quality and overall efficiency. However, as healthcare technologies or medical devices continuously rely more on software development, one of the core challenges is examining how Connected Health is regulated – often impacting Connected Health innovation. The purpose of this paper is to present an understanding of how Connected Health is regulated. Many of these regulatory developments fall under “medical devices”, giving rise to Software-as-a-Medical Device (SaaMD).

Through an extensive literature review, this paper demystifies Connected Health regulation. It presents the outcome of expert discussions which explore the key regulatory developments in the context of Connected Health to provide a practical guide to understanding how regulation can potentially shape healthcare innovation.

Several key issues are identified, and the authors present a comprehensive overview of regulatory developments relating to Connected Health with a view to support the continued growth of IT-enabled healthcare service models. The authors also identify the key challenges in Connected Health and identify areas for future research.

A key outcome of this research is a clearer understanding of the opportunities and challenges that regulation and standards present to Connected Health. Furthermore, this research is of critical importance in a first attempt towards recognising the impact of regulation and standards compliance in Connected Health.