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This qualitative case study aims to identify and analyse the factors influencing the implementation and effectiveness of electronic health record systems (EHRS) in primary health-care (PHC) facilities in Tanzania. This study aims to explore ways to optimize the use of EHRS for better health-care service delivery.

The study uses a qualitative case study design. Data were collected through interviews and focus groups conducted with health-care workers and information and communication technology officers at the PHC facilities in Tanzania. Purposive sampling and data source triangulation were used to address potential biases and limitations associated with the study’s small sample size.

This study identifies several key findings related to the implementation and effectiveness of EHRS in Tanzanian PHC facilities. The primary obstacles include inadequate technical infrastructure, poor internet connectivity and insufficient financial resources. The study suggests a comprehensive strategy for improving EHRS, emphasizing patient and health-care professional involvement in system design, investments in technical infrastructure and connectivity, data quality and accuracy and ongoing technical support and training.

This research contributes to the existing body of knowledge by offering a nuanced understanding of the Tanzanian health-care context. It emphasizes the need for tailored solutions and strategies specific to the region’s challenges and opportunities. The study’s originality lies in its focus on EHRS in the Tanzanian context, providing valuable insights for future initiatives. A key policy implication underscores the importance of a supportive regulatory framework, dedicated resources and consistent stakeholder communication for successful EHRS implementation.

This paper aims to review the elements of facilities condition index (FCI) as one of the most widely used metrics for describing the physical condition of facilities and as a measure of financial indicator related to maintenance activity. This research will benefit future studies that focus on implementation of FCI and encourage the best practice when assessing the physical condition to evaluate the performance of facilities as well as to plan for maintenance action to be taken and financial implication involved based on the findings from FCI.

A total of 33 studies from 2012 to 2022 were identified and extracted from four academic databased, named Scopus, Google Scholar, Web of Science and Mendeley. These published studies were selected because it matches with the inclusion requirements for research question, “What are the elements of facilities condition index discussed in the literature from 2012 to 2022?”. To answer the research question, the studies in ATLAS.ti were grouped into five major themes based on the codes and categories found.

This paper presents the findings of a thematic analysis of the current literature discussed about FCI. A total of 33 studies from 2012 to 2022 were identified and extracted from four academic databased, named Scopus, Google Scholar, Web of Science and Mendeley. A themed review was conducted, and five themes were identified as elements of FCI, which are named as follows: “Condition Assessment”, “Deferred Maintenance”, “Facilities Performance”, “Financial and Fund Allocation” and “Decision Making”.

This paper fulfils the fundamental elements on current FCI practices as well as intended to highlight existing practices that are essential to evaluate facilities performance and planning for maintenance strategies.

This paper evaluates the factors influencing the utilization of the Internet of Things (IoT) for sustainable facilities management (SFM) practices in Saudi Arabia.

A mixed approach, combining a literature review, pilot-testing and questionnaire survey, was adopted to evaluate the factors. Twenty-seven factors were identified and grouped into four groups: technical, business and organizational, operational and security and privacy. The questionnaire was distributed to 30 facilities managers and 30 IoT specialists, totaling 60 practitioners, to determine the effect index of each factor. The practitioners' consensus on the ranking of the factors was then determined.

The study identifies the top-ranking factors as: “Difficulty in ensuring data security and protection,” “Difficulty in ensuring data privacy and confidentiality” and “Limited awareness and understanding of IoT benefits and capabilities.” These factors highlight the challenges to successful IoT implementation in the FM sector. The FM sector could benefit from utilizing IoT while maintaining the security, privacy and effectiveness of building operations by successfully addressing these concerns. A high level of consensus on the ranking of the factors was observed between facilities managers and IoT specialists. This was substantiated by a Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient of 0.79.

This study enriches the literature by combining practical insights from facilities managers with technical expertise from IoT specialists on the factors impacting IoT implementation in the Saudi Arabian FM sector. Beyond academic contributions, it provides practical insights for industry professionals, fostering a culture of knowledge-sharing and guiding future research in this field.

The physical environment of correctional facilities promote infectious disease transmission and outbreaks. The purpose of this study is to compare the COVID-19 burden between the correctional facility (incarcerated individuals and staff members) and non-correctional facility population in Ontario during the COVID-19 pandemic.

All individuals in Ontario with a laboratory confirmation of SARS-CoV-2 between 15 January 2020 and 31 December 2022 and entered into the provincial COVID-19 data were included. Cases were classified as a correctional facility case (living or working in a correctional facility) or a non-correctional facility case. COVID-19 vaccination status was obtained from the provincial COVID-19 vaccine registry. Statistics Canada census data were used to calculate COVID-19 incidence and hospitalization rates for incarcerated cases and the non-correctional facility population.

Between 15 January 2020 and 31 December 2022, there were 1,550,045 COVID-19 cases in Ontario of which 8,292 (0.53%) cases were reported in correctional (63.8% amongst incarcerated individuals, 18.6% amongst staff and 17.7% amongst an unknown classification) and 1,541,753 (99.47%) were non-correctional facility cases. Most cases in correctional facilities were men (83.8%) and aged 20–59 years (93.1%). COVID-19 incidence and hospitalization rates were generally higher among incarcerated individuals compared to the non-correctional facility population throughout the study period. COVID-19 incidence peaked in January 2022 for both the correctional facility population (21,543.8 per 100,000 population) and the non-correctional facility population (1915.1 per 100,000 population). The rate of COVID-19 hospitalizations peaked for the correctional facility population aged 20–59 in March 2021 (70.7 per 100,000 population) and in April 2021 for the non-correctional facility population aged 20–59 (19.8 per 100,000 population). A greater percentage of incarcerated individuals (73.0%) were unvaccinated at time of their COVID-19 diagnosis compared to the non-correctional facility population (49.3%). Deaths amongst correctional facility cases were rare (0.1%, 6 / 8,292) compared to 1.0% of non-correctional facility cases (n = 15,787 / 1,541,753).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals incarcerated in correctional facilities in Ontario had higher COVID-19 incidence and hospitalization rates compared to the non-correctional facility population. These results support prioritizing incarcerated individuals for public health interventions to mitigate COVID-19 impacts in correctional facilities.

This study aims to examine facility management practices in the Nigerian healthcare sector, exploring approaches and identifying challenges facing effective healthcare facilities management. The purpose is to contribute to the development of a framework for enhancing healthcare facility management efficiency in Nigeria.

The study employs a sequential in-depth exploratory qualitative research approach. The data collection involved conducting semi-structured interviews with 15 facility managers from diverse healthcare organisations in Nigeria. The qualitative data collected were analysed using thematic analysis.

The study reveals scheduled, unscheduled and mixed approaches as the three facility management approaches used in Nigeria. It also substantiates the underdeveloped nature of facility management in Nigeria's healthcare sector, exacerbated by challenges such as socioeconomic, operational, technological and regulatory challenges.

The study uncovers systemic issues affecting have attainment of Sustainable Development Goal 3 (Good Health and Well-being) and advocates for a comprehensive approach to enhance healthcare infrastructure, contributing to improved health outcomes and sustainable development.

This research uniquely uncovers the hidden challenges facing effective healthcare facility management in Nigeria, providing a foundation for stakeholders to formulate solutions and rescue the struggling state of healthcare facilities in the country.

This paper aims to propose a bi-level mixed integer linear location-allocation problem. The upper-level objective function is dedicated to minimizing the total distances covered by customers to meet the p-selected facilities and the fixed cost values for establishing these facilities. While in the lower level, a customer preference function evaluates the priority of customers in selecting facilities.

The solution approach to the proposed model uses the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) optimality conditions to the lower-level problem where a set of p-selected facilities are introduced as the selection of the upper-level decision maker. The bi-level model reduces to a single-level model with some added binary variables.

Sensitivity analysis of the proposed bi-level model concerning variations of such different parameters as customers’ preferences and the number of selected facilities have been provided, using some numerical examples. Also, locating a recreational facility in Mazandaran province, Iran, has been provided to evaluate the reliability of the proposed model and efficiency of the solution approach, as well.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is original and its findings are not available elsewhere.

Users are key stakeholders in event facilities, and therefore facilities management (FM) services must meet their needs and expectations. The paper aims to assess users’ perceptions of FM practices and sustainability in event facilities in higher education institutions.

The study used a descriptive design approach to explore the perceptions of end-users of event facilities. Using Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology as a case study, 384 users of the event facilities were contacted through the email directory of the event facilities. Questionnaires were used to collect data and analysed in descriptive and inferential statistics with the aid of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS v22.0).

The study categorised users’ perceptions into customer care, security and safety and service quality dimensions. The results revealed that constituent key important indices of these three dimensions were not significant at both the composite and individual levels. Thus, the users generally perceived FM practices in the event facilities to be below standard. None of the three sustainability constituents was significant, suggesting that users perceived event FM sustainability practices as below standard.

The study presents users’ perceptions of FM practices in event facilities. It has also suggested effective ways of managing event facilities to improve user comfort, safety and satisfaction.

The study provides relevant information on users’ perceptions of FM practices. It specifically has sustainable FM as a key component, which is crucial for achieving sustainable development goals.

This study aims to review the status quo, current state of research, research hot themes and research gaps in sustainable facilities management (SFM) in the built environment (BE) through an extant literature review.

To map and analyze knowledge paths in the context of SFM research, a sequential explanatory mixed-method review involving bibliometric and content analysis was used to help identify current research trends, research hot themes and knowledge gaps. The Scopus search engine was used to find 169 relevant articles. For a better understanding of the literature accumulated, a bibliometric analysis was carried out by using VOSviewer to reveal current research themes, the status quo and current state of research as well as research gaps.

Through the literature review and content analysis, the current research themes on SFM revealed from the study include green building technologies, assessment methods of SFM, smart buildings and building information modeling. The research hot themes in SFM include smart buildings and green building technologies, green buildings (GB), architectural and building designs in the university sector, assessment methods in buildings and decision-making and the adoption of asset and facility management in the university sector. Indoor air pollution, intelligent buildings, climate change, maintenance, environmental management, facilities, historic preservation, environmental performance, energy management, etc. are the research gaps identified from the study, and these serve as potential areas for future research studies under SFM. It was recognized that facilities managers are increasingly involved with sustainability policies within their organizations and are developing sustainability agendas to keep up with the changing nature of the facilities management (FM) profession.

The findings of this study hold relevance to the FM practice, as the integration of SFM by facilities managers can lead to waste reduction, decreased operating expenses and reduced energy consumption. In addition, occupants of sustainable buildings experience improved conditions that contribute to better health and productivity, thus boosting their overall well-being. Consistent with the themes of smart buildings and green technologies, revealed to be the hot themes in the SFM research scope, properties with sustainable features can command higher rental rates and property values, appealing to a broader range of stakeholders. SFM practices in universities can aid in saving money from reduced facility operational costs and improve the image of institutions while creating better indoor environments for students and staff. The analyses of countries involved in research can open doors for the establishment of research groups and the development of collaboration between universities in different countries researching similar topics of interest.

The geographical scope of this study is not limited and, therefore, encourages broad applicability of the findings to the global sustainable BE.

Despite the opportunities of digital twins (DTs) for smart buildings, limited research has been conducted regarding the facility management stage, and this is explained by the high complexity of accurately representing and modelling the physics behind the DTs process. This study thus organises and consolidates the fragmented literature on DTs implementation for smart buildings at the facility management stage by exploring the enablers, applications and challenges and examining the interrelationships amongst them.

A systematic literature review approach is adopted to analyse and synthesise the existing literature relating to the subject topic.

The study revealed six main categories of enablers of DTs for smart building at the facility management stage, namely perception technologies, network technologies, storage technologies, application technologies, knowledge-building and design processes. Three substantial categories of DTs application for smart buildings were revealed at the facility management stage: efficient operation and service monitoring, efficient building energy management and effective smart building maintenance. Subsequently, the top four major challenges were identified as being “lack of a systematic and comprehensive reference model”, “real-time data integration”, “the complexity and uncertainty nature of real-time data” and “real-time data visualisation”. An integrative framework is finally proposed by examining the interactive relationship amongst the enablers, the applications and the challenges.

The findings could guide facility managers/engineers to fairly understand the enablers, applications and challenges when DTs are being implemented to improve smart building performance and achieve user satisfaction at the facility management stage.

This study contributes to the knowledge body on DTs by extending the scope of the existing studies to identify the enablers and applications of DTs for smart buildings at the facility management stage and the specific challenges.

The goal of this study was to determine the impact of access to credit facilities on financial performance among farmers of cooperative societies. The study also tested the predictive power of financial literacy.

The descriptive survey research design was used for the study while the sample size was 240 farmers of cooperative societies from South-East Nigeria. The farmers were categorised into those with access to credit facilities and those without access to credit facilities. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data for the study. Data were analysed using multiple analyses of variance (MANOVA) and multiple regression analysis.

Farmers with access to credit facilities reported higher financial performance such as return on investment, working capital, net profit, profit margin and sales. However, those without access to credit facilities reported lower mean scores on financial performance. Also, financial literacy, like financial knowledge, attitude and awareness, significantly predicts the impact of access to credit facilities on financial performance. It was also found that the duration of repayment of credit facilities, like medium and long term, contributes more to improving financial performance.

This study has shown that even though access to credit facilities impacts financial performance, financial literacy is an important consideration. Also, the duration of repayment is a crucial factor.