Motivated by rising demands for medical care and the recent trends in medical care delivery, this work designs, develops, and evaluates the augmented virtual doctor office (AVDO). AVDO is intended to provide group medical visits in cyberspace (Cyber GMV). This research adopts the design science approach to design AVDO based on the extension of media naturalness (MN) theory. AVDO is implemented in an augmented world setting that integrates real visual cues with a virtual-world technology (Second Life¨ in this case). The assessment of AVDO is carried out in two ways: (1) through a synthesis of the extended MN theory and technology acceptance theories to assess the relationships of design features as perceived by patients with outcomes that include understanding, perceived effectiveness, trust, and behavior intentions, and (2) through the assessment of AVDO's proof of value and proof of use as a supplementary channel for the delivery of medical care. Our work shows how the design features significantly influence outcomes and patients' positive views of the design's value and use. Theoretical and practical contributions of the work are presented. > >
The trend toward distributed processing has significantly increased the awareness of data as a key corporate resource and underscored the importance of its management. In spite of this, there is a lack of empirical investigation of issues related to data resource management (DRM) in distributed processing environments. Being perhaps the first empirical attempt, this exploratory study identifies four information systems (IS) variables related to DRM in a distributed environment. It also seeks to examine the notion of gestalt fit to describe the nature of the relationships among these variables. In addition, the study evaluates whether internally congruent groups outperform their opposites in realizing DRM success. The results of cluster analysis support the view of gestalt fit by identifying five clusters. The results also suggest that organizations represented by a well-blended configuration of high intersite data dependence, high centralization of IS decisions, high concentration IS resources at the central site, and low DRM-related autonomy granted to local sites appear to realize a greater degree of DRM success than the other groups. The implications of the study are discussed, and further research directions are proposed.