Capstone award winners with Dr. Ettinger. Travis Lucky (center) and Pattarin Mekanontchai, right.

UO’s Applied Information Management Present Research Awards

The University of Oregon Applied Information Management (AIM) Master’s Degree Program is well known for the cutting edge questions posed by students in the final research course, entitled Capstone. Capstone provides an opportunity for students, who work full time while completing the degree, to select a topic in the larger field of information management and to build a clearly defined link between their professional activity and academic inquiry. Most professionals have little time to conduct research as a regular part of their workday, although many would probably say they would benefit from the opportunity.

Through Capstone, students take time to step back and reflect on the complex issues they face every day—to think more deeply about their work in a way that is necessary of all who aspire to leadership in the information management field.

From left to right: Scott Schimkowitsch, Travis Luckey, Dr. Linda Ettinger, Pattarin Mekanontchai, Erik Rasmussen, Jeremy Mullis, and Michael Pritchard.

Papers focus on the complexities of managing the human dimensions of information systems so that technology is more supportive and less obstructive—such as how to responsibly integrate technology into the health care system, how to meet the employment needs of information workers, and how to align security metrics with the larger business goals.

Each year, an award is presented to recognize excellent research, with focus on three categories: execution of the overall research process, depth of the research design, and quality of the research outcome. This year, awards were presented to Travis Luckey and Pattarin Mekanontchai.

Pattarin Mekanontchai is IT Manager at Thompson Metal Fab, Inc. The title of her research study is Implementation of Effective Change Management for Successful Integration of Health Information Technology (HIT) Systems in Hospitals. While noting that the healthcare industry is under increasing pressure to utilize information technology (IT) in an effort to reduce process inefficiencies, control spiraling healthcare costs, and improve the quality of patient care, she observes that it is very common to see a health organization spend large amounts of money on health information technology (HIT) systems and yet fail to implement them because of poor change leadership. Pattarin suggests that the benefits of HIT depend on successful systematic implementation, which is the responsibility of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO).

Simply spending more without improving the focus and operation of current initiatives will not guarantee greater societal benefit, improved provider efficiency, or better health outcomes. As part of her study, Pattarin examined two systems: Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) and three key methods to combat resistance to change within a hospital environment:  communication, collaboration, and empowerment.

Travis Luckey is Director of Information Technology at VTM Group. The title of his research study is Key Stages of Disaster Recovery Planning for Time-critical Business Information Technology Systems. As noted by Travis, when disasters interrupt services provided by vital information technology (IT) systems, many businesses never recover. He describes key elements, supported by best practices, in disaster recovery planning, with a goal to help companies to develop effective disaster recovery plans, focusing on the recovery of time-critical IT systems, and including strategies to test and revise the plans on a regular basis.

Planning stages include project initiation, conducting a business impact analysis, developing a DR plan, testing a DR plan, and maintaining a DR plan. And because it is not possible to recover all time-critical IT systems simultaneously due to limited resources, Travis recommends that businesses prioritize recovery operations and establish how much information can afford to be lost from each system due to the outage.

The first step in the prioritization process is to define a maximum tolerable downtime (MTD) for each time-critical IT system. Next, the business should calculate a recovery time objective (RTO) that declares how quickly the system should be restored. The final step in the prioritization process is to create a recovery point objective (RPO) that identifies the amount of information that a business can afford to lose permanently from each system during a disaster.

For more information on the AIM program, please call (800) 824-2714 or e-mail aim@uoregon.edu.

For a list of titles and abstracts of the research papers produced by AIM students, click here.