The Chinese Economic Society has awarded NUS Computing Provost’s Chair Professor Teo Hock Hai and Associate Professor Tan Chuan Hoo the Information Management Research Award.
Their winning research paper, “Rural-Urban Healthcare Access Inequality Challenge: Transformative Roles of Information Technology,” was published in the MIS Quarterly journal in 2022 and written in conjunction with collaborators from Zhejiang University, City University of Hong Kong, and Southeast University.
The stark disparity in accessing quality healthcare between the rural and urban areas in China poses significant challenges to the nation’s stability, progress, and financial health. For example, most hospitals are concentrated in urban areas, while the citizens in the rural areas have to rely on village clinics or travel far distances to find the nearest facility. Policymakers have turned to health information technology (HIT) to alleviate this critical and enduring challenge.
The paper examines the effectiveness of healthcare IT systems in China – how effective was HIT in addressing the issue of healthcare access inequality? The researchers stress the importance of examining this issue from a societal perspective as well. For example, the frustrations rural patients face may manifest in an increase in protests, destruction of medical properties, harassment of medical staff, and even the death of healthcare professionals. Multiple actors and their different goals and values can affect HIT effectiveness.
However, getting data from individuals and hospitals for this study has been laborious. Assoc Prof Tan Chuan Hoo said, “Data collection was done manually, and we needed to navigate to the rural and urban areas. The team also needed to understand the regulator policies (e.g. going through volumes of policy documentation) to gain on-ground understanding of the unique context of the healthcare situation in China.”
On receiving the award, Prof Teo Hock Hai expressed, “The award underscores the importance of universal access to quality healthcare services. It acknowledges our diligent efforts in comprehensively addressing this issue across various levels of the healthcare ecosystem. This recognition honours the insights gleaned from our research, which have led to valuable implications for policy making and execution of healthcare initiatives”.
