Department of Information Systems, College of Business, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Department of E-business, School of Management and E-Business, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2020 Jul 1;27(7):991-999. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocaa064.
Many countries have implemented quarantine rules during the global outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Understanding how hospitals can continue providing services in an effective manner under these circumstances is thus important. In this study, we investigate how information technology (IT) helped hospitals in mainland China better respond to the outbreak of the pandemic.
We conducted a content analysis of pages published on the websites of the top 50 hospitals in mainland China between January 22 and February 21, 2020. In total, we analyzed 368 pages that the hospitals published during the initial days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose was to identify common themes related to the utilization of IT by these hospitals in response to the pandemic's outbreak.
We identified 5 focal themes across the webpages published by the hospitals during our study period, including (1) popular medical science education, (2) digitalized hospital processes, (3) knowledge management for medical professionals, (4) telemedicine, and (5) new IT initiatives for healthcare services. Our analysis revealed that Chinese hospitals spent greater effort in promoting popular medical science education in the initial stages of our study period and more on telemedicine in the latter stages.
We propose a configurational approach for hospitals to design response strategies to pandemic outbreaks based on their available resources.
Our study provides rich insights for hospitals to better utilize their IT resources and some recommendations for policymaker to better support hospitals in the future.
许多国家在全球 2019 年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）爆发期间实施了检疫规则。因此，了解医院如何在这些情况下有效地继续提供服务非常重要。在这项研究中，我们调查了信息技术（IT）如何帮助中国大陆的医院更好地应对大流行的爆发。
我们对中国大陆前 50 名医院网站在 2020 年 1 月 22 日至 2 月 21 日期间发布的页面进行了内容分析。总共分析了这些医院在 COVID-19 大流行初期发布的 368 页内容。目的是确定与这些医院在应对疫情爆发时利用 IT 相关的常见主题。
我们在研究期间从医院发布的网页中确定了 5 个焦点主题，包括（1）普及医学科学教育，（2）数字化医院流程，（3）医疗专业人员的知识管理，（4）远程医疗，以及（5）医疗保健服务的新 IT 计划。我们的分析表明，中国医院在研究初期更注重普及医学科学教育，在后期更注重远程医疗。
我们提出了一种针对医院的配置方法，以便根据其可用资源设计应对大流行爆发的策略。
我们的研究为医院更好地利用其 IT 资源提供了丰富的见解，并为政策制定者提供了一些建议，以在未来更好地支持医院。
