Sushil K. Sharma

Ball State University · Dean Office

Abstract Background The COVID-19 pandemic caused profound socioeconomic disruption in addition to claiming millions of lives worldwide. Beyond the infection-related mortality, a chronic and morbid condition known as “Long-COVID” is now getting increasing attention. Scholars and clinicians around the world are still trying to ascertain which COVID-1...

The rapid growth of healthcare technology, information systems, and their adjuncts indicates a need for well-considered policies, greater research, actions, and active involvement of stakeholders at all levels in modern-day healthcare systems. Health-related technology is created, maintained, and integrated into medical infrastructure by humans, fo...

Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic impacted office operations and education globally. It has had enormous global economic, political, and social ramifications, affecting productivity and competitiveness. Organizations switched fast to virtual operations. The pandemic reduced output, yet companies battled to go on with normal operations. Remote o...

Little is known about the mental health impact of having a family member or friend infected with COVID-19. Thus, the purpose of this study was to conduct a comprehensive national assessment of the psychological impact of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, or death among family members and friends. A multi-item valid and reliable questionnaire was...

A total of 3,633 participants responded to the questionnaire and were predominantly White (61%), males (61%), married (63%), working full time (79%), urban dwellers (57%), and with a bachelor's degree or higher (65%) (Table 1). Almost a quarter of the participants reported a history of COVID-19 infection (23%) and more than a third had symptoms of...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the lives of people in many ways. However, little is known about weight gain in American adults during the pandemic. Aims and methods The purpose of this study was to conduct a national assessment of weight gain in adult Americans after the first year of the pandemic. An online questionnaire was employ...

Despite the extensive usage of the internet, little is known about internet addiction among Americans during the pandemic. A valid and reliable questionnaire was deployed online via MTurk to recruit a national sample of adult Americans to understand the nature and extent of internet addiction. A total of 1305 individuals participated in the study w...

The impact of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality among family and friends on vaccination preferences is not well explored. A valid and reliable questionnaire was deployed online via mTurk to recruit a national random sample of adult Americans to understand COVID-19 vaccination preferences and its relationship with COVID-19 infection in social network...

Given the results from early trials, COVID-19 vaccines will be available by 2021. However, little is known about what Americans think of getting immunized with a COVID-19 vaccine. Thus, the purpose of this study was to conduct a comprehensive and systematic national assessment of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in a community-based sample of the America...

The results show 49 percent of the study participants were either very concerned or concerned about the quantity of COVID-19-related information, while 51 percent were either slightly concerned or not concerned. Quantity refers to the number of information sources, options for information and volume of information. The results also show 64 percent...

Background The mental health impact of the pandemic after the initial lockdowns has not been well studied in the USA. Thus, the purpose of this study was to conduct a comprehensive and systematic national assessment of the prevalence of depression and anxiety in the adult US population. Methods A multi-item, valid and reliable questionnaire was de...

Site use is important to the sustainability of social networking sites. In this paper, we explore the drivers of member site use through the theoretical lens of social capital theory. Drawing upon supporting literature, we contend that social capital acts as an important factor in motivating members to continue their site usage. Specifically, we ex...

Continued site use by social networking site (SNS) members is important to the vitality of a SNS. Through the lens of Social Capital Theory, in this paper, we theorize the potential role of relational capital in cultivating members' continued site use. We posit that relational capital in the forms of trust, community identification, and reciprocity...

The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is gaining momentum as more and more people increasingly are using technology tools and devises for their daily activities. Users expect highly effective and easy-to-learn interfaces and developers and designers now realize the crucial role the users' interface plays. HCI and System Usability design have greater...

Social networking sites have successfully grown to be an international cyber phenomenon. In this study, the authors examine member engagements on social networking sites. Engagements such as site use and self-disclosure lead to the growth of social relationships, increased site traffic, customized services, and an accumulation of user generated con...

The objective of the study was to identify potential barriers and facilitators to improve clinical practice using computer-based Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS). Studies published since 2000 were found using PubMed database, PsychInfo, CINAHL, EBSCO host database, and Google scholar. Twenty-six relevant publications were examined. Thirty-fi...

Anecdotal evidence suggests that online users’ concern about risks may deter them from using social networking sites. Unfortunately, the existing literature did not develop a clear conceptualization of the key risk factors and failed to identify and differentiate the underlying facets of risks. In addition, prior studies did not systematically capt...

This paper studies Facebook users’ learning-based attitude formation and the relationship between member attitude and self-disclosure. Through the theoretical lens of learning theories, we recognize the key antecedents to member attitude toward a social networking as stemming from classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and social learning-re...

In this research the authors examine member self-disclosure phenomenon at social networking sites. Self-disclosure enables member interactions, service customizations, and digital content generation and hence self-disclosure is imperative to the success of social networking sites. Drawing upon Social Capital Theory, we develop a succinct research m...

Electronic voting—the use of computers or computerized voting equipment to cast and tabulate and tally ballots in an election in a trustable manner—is a pillar of e-Government. The DynaVote voting protocol system proposed by Cetinkaya and Koc (2007) is assumed secure and practicable on a network. However, the DynaVote e-Voting protocol does not com...

The benefits a firm can realise from establishing cooperative relationships with suppliers and customers have been documented, extensively. However, very little is known about what happens when a firm uses information technology to facilitate a cooperative relationship (IT-mode) with suppliers and customers, and when it uses face-to-face (socialisa...

This study’s aim is to find out student’s perspectives on online and face-to-face problem-based learning approaches. The study was conducted at the Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technologies, Faculty of Education, Hacettepe University. Participants were 42 freshman students attending the department during fall of 2006-2007. The...

The business environment of the 21st century require organizations to respond quickly to market demands and thus traditional organization structures and strategy are no longer capable of sustaining the needs of this relentless pace. New forms of organizations in the form of virtual organization (VO) hold promise in the network world. Several organi...

Electronic voting—the use of computers or computerized voting equipment to cast and tabulate and tally ballots in an election in a trustable manner—is a pillar of e-Government. The DynaVote voting protocol system proposed by Cetinkaya and Koc (2007) is assumed secure and practicable on a network. However, the DynaVote e-Voting protocol does not com...

The business environment of the 21st century require organizations to respond quickly to market demands and thus traditional organization structures and strategy are no longer capable of sustaining the needs of this relentless pace. New forms of organizations in the form of virtual organization (VO) hold promise in the network world. Several organi...

Consumer e-commerce extends the marketplace of traditional business and brings in business opportunities in online retailing and service. As a consequence of intensive competition among online vendors, the need to capture customers has become a top priority. Thanks to the wide penetration of Internet, the online consumer group now consists of indiv...

As a major medium for information transmission, Internet plays an important role in diffusing and spreading news on web. Some governments attach great importance and pay lot of effort trying to detect, track the development of events and forecast emergency on internet. On the basis of the researches in the field of topic detection and tracking, we...

The business environment of the 21st century require organizations to respond quickly to market demands and thus traditional organization structures and strategy are no longer capable of sustaining the needs of this relentless pace. New forms of organizations in the form of virtual organization (VO) hold promise in the network world. Several organi...

As a major medium for information transmission, Internet plays an important role in diffusing and spreading news on web. Some governments attach great importance and pay lot of effort trying to detect, track the development of events and forecast emergency on internet. On the basis of the researches in the field of topic detection and tracking, we...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th IFIP WG 6.1 Conference on e-Business, e-Services and e-Society, held in Nancy, France, in September 2009. The 31 revised papers were selected from numerous submissions. They cover a wide and important variety of issues in e-business, e-services and e-society, including security, trust, and p...

As a major medium for information transmission, Internet plays an important role in diffusing and spreading news on web. Some governments attach great importance and pay lot of effort trying to detect, track the development of events and forecast emergency on internet. On the basis of the researches in the field of topic detection and tracking, we...

Offshore information technology (IT) outsourcing has been becoming mainstream alternative to in-house operations. While offshore development is a relatively new trend in IT, the concept of outsourcing manufacturing and service operations has been going on for more than 50 years. Many Asian countries are driving their economic success through taking...

A Virtual Organisation (VO) is a collection of several independent companies connected together by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to provide products and services to the customer. With the availability and ubiquitousness of ICT the concept of VO is a reality. Achieving customer satisfaction in a VO environment is complex. Total Qu...

In this paper, we have designed an electronic market where a buyer negotiates with n suppliers to procure p types of items within a given time frame. A privacy preserving 1-n-p negotiation protocol has been developed based on secure group communication and secure multiparty computation. The suppliers submit their bids. The objective is to label the...

The past few years have seen a rise in the number of companies' embracing e-commerce technologies in developing countries and the volume of e-commerce has been growing. However, as compared to developed nations, developing countries still have been lacking in e-commerce. This chapter identifies some of the reasons that may be responsible for lack o...

The ongoing tension between certainty over uncertainty is the main force that is driving the evidence-based medicine movement. The central philosophy of this practice lies in the idea that one can never take for granted one’s own practice, but by using a structured, problem-based approach, practitioners can logically manoeuvre their way through the...

Internet, wireless, mobile, multi-media (voice, video, 3D), broadband, and other information and communication technologies (ICTs) are rapidly consolidating global communication networks and international trade with implications for people in developing countries. Extensive literature suggests that use of ICTs have a great impact on society for imp...

The past few years have seen a rise in the number of companies’ embracing e-commerce technologies in developing countries and the volume of e-commerce has been growing. However, as compared to developed nations, developing countries still have been lacking in e-commerce. This chapter identifies some of the reasons that may be responsible for lack o...

The ability to perform E-Commerce over the Internet has become the driver of the new digital economy. As it has opened up opportunities for businesses and consumers to conduct online transactions on a 24/7 basis, at the same time, it has also opened new opportunities for hackers to exploit the medium for nefarious cyber attacks. This paper discusse...

The purpose of the information security policy is to establish an organization-wide approach to prescribe mechanisms that help identify and prevent the compromise of information security and the misuse of organization’s data, applications, networks, and computer systems to define mechanisms that protect the organization from its legal and ethical r...

Healthcare organizations are facing many challenges in the 21s t Century due to changes taking place in global healthcare systems. Spiraling costs, financial constraints, increased emphasis on accountability and transparency, changes in education, growing complexities of biomedical research, new partnerships in healthcare and great advances in IT s...

One of the key factors that distinguishes the intelligent business enterprise of the 21st century is the emphasis on knowledge and information. Unlike businesses of the past, the fast, high-tech, and global emphasis of businesses today requires the ability to capture, manage, and utilize knowledge and information in order to improve efficiency, bet...

As electronic commerce (e-commerce) is becoming the way to trade, it is the large corporations that are exploiting their finances and technical expertise to jump into this abyss. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are finding too many obstacles to participate in e-commerce. SMEs in Asia Pacific in particular, face many obstacles and thus are still...

Healthcare organizations are facing many challenges in the 21st Century due to changes taking place in global healthcare systems. Spiraling costs, financial constraints, increased emphasis on accountability and transparency, changes in education, growing complexities of biomedical research, new partnerships in healthcare and great advances in IT su...

New technologies, increasingly demanding customers, new aggressive competitors, and innovations in products and value now characterize our current competitive environment. Organizations of the 21st century have no choice but to invest in new technologies, especially knowledge management tools to enhance their services and products in order to meet...

The main purpose of this chapter is to bring out and discuss the central facts pertaining to the importance of incorporating knowledge management in the area of e-health. This is accomplished by focusing on the application of knowledge management in e-health and its effects.

Internet, wireless, mobile, multi-media (voice, video, 3D), broadband, and other information and communication technologies (ICTs) are rapidly consolidating global communication networks and international trade with implications for people in developing countries. Extensive literature suggests that use of ICTs have a great impact on society for imp...

It has become imperative for companies, governments, and organizations to understand how to guard against hackers, outsiders, and even disgruntled employees who threaten their information security, integrity and daily business operations. To address national needs for computer security education, many universities have incorporated computer and sec...

The implementation of ERP systems is a complex undertaking with wide-reaching impact on key stakeholders including staff and customers. As many as 90% of all initiated ERP implementation projects can be regarded as failures as a result of changes in scope, prolongation of the project time or simply budget overruns. This paper presents an integrated...

Neural networks are perhaps the most significant forecasting tool to be applied to the financial markets in recent years and are gaining ascendancy because of reports of their success. This paper checks out the classification capability of Radial Basis Function Networks (RBF), Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs) with and without Principal Component Anal...

The main purpose of this chapter is to bring out and discuss the central facts pertaining to the importance of incorporating knowledge management in the area of e-health. This is accomplished by focusing on the application of knowledge management in e-health and its effects.

The shift to a knowledge-based economy results largely from developments in information and communications technologies. Knowledge-based economies offer huge opportunities for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to develop entirely new high-value products and services, add value to existing products and services, reduce costs, develop new expo...

Healthcare organizations are facing many challenges in the 21st Century due to changes taking place in global healthcare systems. Spiraling costs, financial constraints, increased emphasis on accountability and transparency, changes in education, growing complexities of biomedical research, new partnerships in healthcare and great advances in IT su...

As electronic commerce (e-commerce) is becoming the way to trade, it is the large corporations that are exploiting their finances and technical expertise to jump into this abyss. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are finding too many obstacles to participate in e-commerce. SMEs in Asia Pacific in particular, face many obstacles and thus are still...

New technologies, increasingly demanding customers, new aggressive competitors, and innovations in products and value now characterize our current competitive environment. Organizations of the 21st century have no choice but to invest in new technologies, especially knowledge management tools to enhance their services and products in order to meet...

Purpose – Education delivery via electronic media is becoming relevant in Nigeria educational systems, especially the universities. In spite of this, there are hindrances affecting the total acceptability of this technology. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, we investigated these critical factors by analyzing the questionnaires collecte...

Virtual communities have become an important aspect in the world of e-commerce. Interactions and product recommendations are increasingly employed by several online businesses. This study examines diverse case studies for the understanding of how virtual communities operate and exchange information, and whether these social interactions influence b...

The number of organizations offering e-commerce solutions is growing exponentially each year. Without a doubt, e-commerce will no longer be a choice for organizations rather it will be a competitive necessity to ensure business prosperity. Integral to the success of e-commerce is having good e-commerce software that can enable organizations to offe...

An increasing number of universities have entered or are contemplating entering into alliances with leading vendors of ERP software and are redesigning both undergraduate and graduate curricula to help students understand the requirements and the design of enterprise‐wide systems solutions through the use of an ERP system. Ball State University joi...

Internet access and agent technology promises to revolutionize the landscape of agricultural business. Already E-commerce is clearly beginning to have a major impact in the agricultural sector. The way people go about purchasing agricultural products is of great concern. Sometimes buyers have to travel far distances to get agricultural products and...

The shift in the nation's attention, resources and interest toward internet-related healthcare activities, often called 'e-health', is dramatic and a most significant development in the healthcare environment. E-health, while exciting and promising, also presents new challenges, particularly in regard to acceptable standards, choice of technologies...

This paper aims to modify and improve the Helbing model to simulate urban settings during emergencies. Using a cluster computer, mass numbers of pedestrians can be modelled as they flee a virtual urban environment. A mobile system is proposed for informing pedestrians of the safest and quickest exit routes.

This paper describes web services and service-oriented architecture and how these new technologies could be exploited to develop integrated software for mobile, distance and distributed learning. The paper also provides details of a prototype translator web service that authors have developed in order to demonstrate the concept.

The Asia-Pacific region is growing in e-commerce adoption despite a global economic slowdown. Developed countries rhat have been offering e-commerce have shown impressive performance iu their respective economies, but the Asia-Pacific region srill lags behind in the e-business race. This is due ro several factors which include language. educarion,...

The revolutionary potential of the internet promises to transform economic and environmental gains. By reducing the amount of energy and materials consumed by business, the internet stands to revolutionise the relation between economic growth and the environment. The internet is improving the capability to understand the science of environmental de...

Turbulent market conditions characterised by very fast and continuous changes are forcing many enterprises to adopt new organisational paradigms of collaboration and cooperation forming highly dynamic organisations known as Virtual Enterprises (VE) or Virtual Organisations (VO). Implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in a virtual e...

Portals have become the Web interface of choice for providing business users with rapid access to the information and services they need to help them do their jobs more efficiently, make better informed business decisions, and enable their organizations to become smarter, thus more competitive. Appropriate deployment of portal, content management,...

A digital economy is a convergence of communications, computing, and information. The essential in the new economy is a structural shift from the industrial economy toward an economy characterized by information, intangibles, and services, and a parallel change toward new work organizations and institutional forms (Gronstedt, 2001; Harreld, 1998; S...

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is the fastest growing industry the world over and it impacts business, international trade, and national economies. The number of nations who are offering e-commerce solutions is increasing every year. Despite the downturn in the Internet economy represented by the crash of many “dot-com” companies, several forecas...

As we move into the 21st century, the need for rapid access to relevant knowledge has never been greater. The business world is becoming increasingly competitive. Even though there is an increasing demand for innovative products and services, enterprises face a daunting task to understand the customers and find ways to attract and retain them. The...

E-government generally refers to the delivery of national or local government information and services via the Internet or other digital means (Relyea, 2002). E-government refers to the ability of government to interact electronically with citizens, businesses, and other governmental entities. The interaction may be in the form of obtaining informa...

The movement toward electronic government (e-government) is rapidly advancing as nations exploit new electronic means of communication such as the Internet. The e-government transformation process can be and often is seriously hindered when initiatives are disjointed and uncoordinated by an overall strategy. Although many countries are creating e-g...

Full-text of this article is not available in this e-prints service. This article was originally published following peer-review in International Journal of Information Management, published by and copyright Elsevier. The paper is based on the rationale that existing enterprise process integration technologies are unlikely to be able to tackle prob...

Negotiation is a means for intelligent agents of a market-oriented grid to communicate and compromise for reaching mutually beneficial agreements in terms of cost and quality of service. In this paper, we have presented a secure negotiation protocol for efficient management of resources in a market-oriented grid environment. The protocol enables bo...

''E-health'' is currently one, if not the, most dramatic developments in the healthcare environment. Initiatives in this area impact a broad spectrum of the nation's individuals and entities, including but not limited to patients, providers, consumers, hospitals, managed care organisations, pharmaceutical entities and pharmaceutical benefit managem...

The internet has enhanced the ability of healthcare providers successfully to manage projects spanning time zones, cultures and physical distances. The high cost of healthcare in the USA is not only affecting the healthcare industry but also placing a great burden on the competitiveness of many major US manufacturing and other businesses. The bigge...

The concept of the learning organisation that strives continually to develop its people and processes is now accepted by many as a competitive necessity in today's business environment (Drucker, 1999; Davenport and Prusak, 1998). Organisations are increasingly being challenged to leverage learning, as it has been widely articulated that knowledge c...

The strive to build customer-centric organisations and the transition from passive to active customer is causing companies to build their information systems around reverse value chain. These systems usually termed as ''web-based information systems'' are changing market dynamics and the manner in which firms conduct business. Customer-centric web-...

The new economy is built on information technology and the sharing of knowledge and intellectual capital. In such a knowledge-based economy, competitive advantage will be with those countries that have the capacity to deliver fast and have innovative forms of work organisations that raise productivity. In such an environment, small and medium-sized...

Healthcare organizations are facing many challenges in the 21st Century due to changes taking place in global healthcare systems. Spiraling costs, financial constraints, increased emphasis on accountability and transparency, changes in education, growing complexities of biomedical research, new partnerships in healthcare and great advances in IT su...

Electronic government (e-government), the ability for government to provide access to services and information twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, is an emerging force today. There are several models that attempt to explain the way in which e-government has evolved or is evolving. This paper presents an overview of a few important governmen...

The main purpose of this chapter is to bring out and discuss the central facts pertaining to the importance of incorporating knowledge management in the area of e-health. This is accomplished by focusing on the application of knowledge management in e-health and its effects.

Electronic government (e-government), the ability for government to provide access to services and information twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, is an emerging force today. There are several models that attempt to explain the way in which e-government has evolved or is evolving. This paper presents an overview of a few important governmen...

Portals have become the Web interface of choice for providing business users with rapid access to the information and services they need to help them do their jobs more efficiently, make better informed business decisions, and enable their organizations to become smarter, thus more competitive. Appropriate deployment of portal, content management,...

The ongoing tension between certainty over uncertainty is the main force that is driving the evidence-based medicine movement. The central philosophy of this practice lies in the idea that one can never take for granted one’s own practice, but by using a structured, problem-based approach, practitioners can logically manoeuvre their way through the...

Innovations in information and communications technologies have created a digital revolution that is changing the way the world works, learns, communicates and transacts business. E-commerce continues to show strong growth and has been influencing the social and economic growth of nations. On one hand e-commerce technologies have helped nations to...

Since the mid-1990s, governments around the world have been taking extraordinary efforts to make services and information available over the web. E-government implementations have been helping to improve service delivery and offer greater transparency and accountability in governance systems. Few studies such as the e-Europe benchmarking project, t...

Several governments have started looking at how mobile technologies can help increase service levels, efficiency and constituent participation. Mobile government (m-government) implementation provides unique opportunities to exploit mobile devices to receive government services and information literally from any place, at any time, using varieties...

E-commerce diffusion has had tremendous success stories in large businesses; however, organisational theories that are applicable to large businesses may not necessarily fit with Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the same way. This study identifies major factors at macro and micro levels that hindered SMEs' participation in e-commerce adoption...