A qualitative study was conducted to examine patients’ acceptance of self-monitoring devices. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) was adapted to this context. The initial elements of the theory were functional performance, medical benefit expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions. The study not only confirmed the presence of these elements but also revealed the existence of two additional elements, namely, the attending doctor and information technology expert. Furthermore, the research revealed the moderators of the influences of the elements on the acceptance. The most important moderator was the patients’ perceived need for the device. Two significant contributions of the research are the theoretical extensions of the UTAUT to a new context and the practical implications which the makers of self-monitoring devices can utilize the results to prepare educational and marketing materials for the benefit of the patients and the medical professionals.

Database design process is a knowledge intensive task that requires expertise, practical experience, and judgment. It is not surprising, therefore, that over the last few years many research prototype database design expert systems have been reported in the literature. This paper is a survey of such tools. These tools are compared with respect to four major aspects: database design support, tool flexibility, expert system features, and implementation characteristics. This study reveals that, in general, there is lack of 1) support for all the phases of the design, 2) support for group database design, 3) graphic support, 4) empirical verification of effectiveness of the tools, 5) long-term maintenance of the tool and database schemata, and 6) specialized knowledge representation schemes, inference, and learning techniques.Request access from your librarian to read this article's full text.

We show how algebraic linear optimization models can be mapped to the relational model of data. We then introduce SQLMP, a new language for model description and manipulation. SQLMP (SQL for Mathematical Programming) is the result of endowing the Structured Query Language (SQL) with additional constructs for the definition of the objective functions and the constraints of optimization models. Features of SQLMP enable 1) smooth integration of mathematical models with SQL-based databases, 2) model manipulation, and 3) attainment of a high degree of model independence. Formal syntax of the SQLMP is given. INFORMS Journal on Computing, ISSN 1091-9856, was published as ORSA Journal on Computing from 1989 to 1995 under ISSN 0899-1499.

A form model and an expert database system that analyzes instances of the form model to derive a conceptual schema are proposed. The form model describes the properties of form fields such as their origin, hierarchical structure, and cardinality. The expert database design system creates a conceptual schema by incrementally integrating related collections of forms. The rules of the expert systems are divided into six phases form selection; entity identification; attribute attachment; relationship identification; cardinality identification; and integrity constraints. The rules of the first phase use knowledge about the form flow to determine the order in which forms are analyzed. The rules in other phases are used in conjunction with a designer dialog to identify the entities, relationships, and attributes of a schema that represents the collection of forms.>