MODULE COSE70633 ENTERPRISE MOBILITY

ASSIGNMENT
Submission Date: Friday 8th January 2016
1.

Introduction
This document forms the specification for your coursework in this module. The coursework
is weighted at 100% of the overall module mark, and there is no other coursework
assignment that you will need to complete. This coursework should be completed and
submitted as an individual piece of work. In other words, it is not group work.
This coursework will address and assess all three Learning Outcomes as indicated in
the Module Handbook. These are also shown below:

Learning Outcome

Skill

1. Discuss critically the principles and

models that underpin the
conceptualisation and
implementation of mobile computing
in organisations at the forefront of
professional practice.
2. Critically evaluate how mobile
computing and systems can
enhance competitive advantage
within current and future
organisational contexts and
commercial risks involved, and
critically discuss the socio-technical
issues, legal, ethical and social
implications, applicability and limits
of mobile solutions.
3. Develop complex enterprise mobility
solutions through a process of
analysis & design

Assessed Through

Enquiry
Knowledge &
Understanding

The Assignment

Learning
Analysis
Enquiry
The Assignment
Reflection

Analysis
Application
Problem Solving

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The Assignment

2. Scenario
The Octagon Hospital is keen on enabling healthcare services that facilitate on-demand
access to time-critical information leading to accurate and timely patient assessment,
and the right treatment and meaningful collaboration between healthcare professionals
through improved workflow ultimately leading to the provision of better patient care.
The hospital recognises that it operates within an information-intensive environment that
demands real-time information exchange between healthcare professionals, patients and
diagnostic services.
The hospital provides key categories of services that would be expected of such an
institution. These include:
General Patient Administration: This involves handling patient information relating to
many hundreds of cases of first-time patient visits to the hospital, follow-up visits, and
emergency cases. Patients can either be outpatients (those that have an appointment
but dont need to stay overnight in the hospital) or inpatients (those that are admitted with
the expectation that they will remain in the hospital for at least one night). In terms of the
associated general administration there is a focus on providing efficient and effective
check-in systems for patients and for enhancing the associated communication between
the hospital and patients regarding appointments. With respect to patient records, the
hospital uses an electronic patient record system that records key patient information.
This information normally includes personal details of a patient, and some clinical data.
Not all clinical data is held in the patient record system since some clinical services use a
paper-based recording system. The electronic patient record system does not include
any support for mobility (devices or applications).
Point-of-Care Services: There are a variety of these services and essentially these are
clinical activities that involve some form of first-hand contact between patients and the
healthcare professionals. These include, for example, clinic-based consultations where
outpatients attend an appointment to see a consultant in a specific clinic, or ward-based
services where Nurses in a ward care for inpatients and where consultants conduct ward
rounds to review patients progress.
In many cases the delivery of these services
requires the movement of either patients or the healthcare professional (for example, a
Consultant may be assigned to a number of wards in different locations and must
therefore visit those wards). Paramedic services also form part of the service delivery
where Paramedics provide critical treatment at the scene of an accident or emergency
and are part of the patient transportation team in ambulances.
The high volume of patients and a shortage of the medical workforce is a significant
challenge faced by the hospital and so the provision of information at the right time and
in right location is essential in order for the hospital to deliver these important services in
a timely and efficient manner.
Asset Management and Tracking: The hospital has hundreds of lifesaving medical
instruments that are geographically dispersed around the hospital site. It can be
extremely difficult to keep track of the details for these instruments - for example, their
location, their frequency of use (and therefore their service schedules). The hospitals
Asset Management Team has field service staff and it is their responsibility for locating
these instruments, providing on-site (in a specific location) technical service or repair
and, where possible, acquiring data regarding their use for example, by acquiring

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usage logs from the instruments. The field service team currently uses laptop devices to
support its work.
Diagnostic Service Provision: Clinical laboratories play an integral role in the
assessment of patients conditions. The laboratories handle extremely large volumes of
specimens and undertake thousands of tests. This is a critical operation in that the
specimens need to be physically sent to diagnostic laboratories and processed in a
timely manner. The associated test results are recorded and conveyed back to the
requesting Consultant or Clinic. Any problems or delays in this process can adversely
affect patient care, and in some cases this can be critical.
Remote Patient-Care Solutions: In some cases, patients are required to collect and
record data in their home environment and to submit this for analysis by the hospital.
Examples of this include diet details, medication details and vital statistics (such as blood
sugar levels and blood pressure etc.) The method of recording these details varies, but
typically patients are provided with paper forms to record details of the collected data.
The hospital recently undertook a pilot implementation in one department (Urology)
where patients were provided with a simple but effective bespoke (dedicated) electronic
mobile device to record their uroflow (the volume of urine passed, the frequency, and
whether this was normal, urgent or an, accident).
Patients can connect their
electronic diary via cable to their PCs at home and upload their results directly to the
hospital where Consultants can view them. The pilot implementation is proving to be
successful and the hospital management is keen on developing this type of system for
other disease areas, and possibly using smartphones as a form of electronic diary.
There are no other examples of any type of mobile device being deployed and used by
patients as part of the hospitals remote patient-care solutions.

3. Requirements
(a)

The narrative above states that, provision of information at the right time and in right
location is essential. With respect to this, discuss what is meant by the following
terms. Identify and explain where each of these occur in the scenario:

Temporal aspects of mobility.

Location-independence.

Location-dependence.
(15 marks)

(b)

Select two Enterprise Mobility models from the literature. Critically discuss and apply
each model in specific context of the hospital scenario. Ensure that you make
reference to all five categories of service.

(20 marks)

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(c)

(d)

Critically evaluate how the following two areas of Enterprise Mobility can enhance
competitive advantage for the Octagon Hospital. For each area your solution should
also include a discussion of: business/commercial risks involved, any socio-technical
issues, legal, ethical and social implications, and any limitations of the area:

Mobile Device Management (MDM) - BYOD, BYOA, CYOD).

(20 marks)

Workforce evolution with mobility.

(20 marks)

Select one category of service from the scenario. For your selected category:
(i)

Undertake an outline analysis of what the current weaknesses and problems are.
Present your analysis as a series of points in a critical narrative.
(5 marks)

(ii) Propose the design for a resolution to the weaknesses and problems. The design
must aim to go beyond automation and seek to deliver transformative impact.
Present your design using a combination of narrative, diagrams and models.

(20 marks)

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4. Assessment Guide
The following sections aim to provide you with guidance when producing your solution.
Only grades D (Distinction), M (Merit) and P (Pass) are pass grades.
An excellent solution (Distinction) will excel in each of the sections listed in the
requirements and provide the assessor with a high degree of confidence in the students
understanding and ability in the area under investigation. The style of academic writing
will be excellent, with minimal or no spelling and grammatical errors. The solution will
demonstrate excellent critical insight and analysis into the principles and practice of
enterprise mobility and the application domain under investigation. The construction of
the solution will demonstrate excellent synthesis of the contributing areas. Published
papers, supplemented by commercial resources, appropriately referenced will underpin
the solution (the references will be in accurate Harvard format with no omissions or
errors.) In addition to the academic underpinning, the solution will include a very realistic
and applied perspective of enterprise mobility in a real-world context. Thus any
translation of concepts/principles into practice will be clearly evident, will be directly
relevant to the scenario, and will demonstrate innovative thinking in the proposal of a
solution that yields transformative impact.
A Merit solution will have provided a good response to each of the sections listed in the
requirements and provide the assessor with a good degree of confidence in the students
understanding and ability in the area under investigation. The style of academic writing
will be good, with minimal or no spelling and grammatical errors. The solution will
demonstrate a competent insight and analysis into the principles and practice of
enterprise mobility and the application domain under investigation there will be some
critical analysis and interpretation of the material, although the academic depth will be
limited, evidenced by associated limited discursive content. The construction of the
solution will demonstrate a very good and solid synthesis of the contributing areas to
provide a sound solution. Published papers, supplemented by commercial resources,
appropriately referenced will underpin the solution (the references will be in accurate
Harvard format with no omissions or errors.) In addition to the academic underpinning,
the solution will include a strong perspective of enterprise mobility in a real-world context,
although some aspects of this may be unrealistic in terms of genuine application, or
some aspects of the solution will be superficial. Thus any translation of
concepts/principles into practice will be evident but may need further explanation and
justification. The solution will demonstrate some innovative thinking in the proposal of a
solution that yields transformative impact.
A Pass solution will have provided a reasonable/competent response to each of the
sections listed in the requirements and thus provide the assessor with confidence in the
students understanding and ability in the general area of enterprise mobility and how
aspects of this are applied to the area under investigation. The style of academic writing
will be acceptable but the overall style, structure and presentation of the material may
be sparse, and perhaps disjointed in parts. There may be spelling and grammatical
errors present. The solution will demonstrate some insight and analysis into the
principles and practice of enterprise mobility and the application domain under
investigation. However, this will mainly be descriptive in nature rather than discursive.
There will be a lack of critical analysis and interpretation of the material and the
academic depth will be lacking. Some published papers, and commercial resources will

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have been used to develop the solution these will have been referenced, although
perhaps incorrectly or references will be missing. Furthermore, the references may not
be in accurate Harvard format. In addition to some academic underpinning, the solution
will include a perspective of enterprise mobility in a real-world context, although some
aspects of this may be unrealistic, outside the scope of the scenario, and appear to be
contrived.
The solution will require significant refinement for it to be considered
acceptable for genuine application in a business context.
Translation of
concepts/principles into practice may be evident but this may be factually incorrect or
illustrate misunderstanding of the key points/issues. The solution will have attempted to
demonstrate some innovative thinking in the proposal of a solution, although this solution
will essentially be one of automation rather than one of transformative impact.

5. Submission Guidelines
5.1.

The maximum word count for your solution should not exceed 3000 words.

5.2.

The assignment solution must be submitted as one typewritten document.

5.3.

Each part of your solution should be clearly delineated using the section headings.
These section headings should be, Part A; Part B; Part C; Part D with each
section representing the solution to section 3(a); 3(b); 3(c); 3(d) in the specification
respectively.

5.4.

The primary method of submission is via Blackboard.

5.5.

You should submit a PDF copy of your solution by the submission deadline.

5.6.

If necessary, you may be asked to submit via another secondary method such as
email attachment. In this case your Tutor will inform you accordingly.

5.7.

The PDF document should not be password protected or have restricted

permissions specifically, it should allow modifications (for annotations and
comments).

5.8.

You are advised to keep an electronic copy of your solution for your own records.

K.Hameed, School of Computing, Staffordshire University, 2015

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