July 10, 2017, at 1:40 pm, at the invitation of the School of Management and Economics, Professor Ritu Agarwal of the University of Maryland at College Park visited our school and made a presentation entitled "An Overview of the the Research Stream in Healthcare and Information Technology and Analytics “ in Room 317 of the main building. The report was hosted by Professor Yan Zhijun. A number of teachers and students attended the report.
        
       At present, the health care system is facing many serious challenges, such as poor quality of care, medical malpractices and high costs. These issues can be mitigated by providing timely information at the point of care and by applying advanced decision-making information technology. Professor Ritu Agarwal gave a brief introduction to the main research directions in the field of healthcare information technology and analysis, including: (1) health care analysis: data-driven medical service perspectives, modeling, operations; (2) new care modes, health information exchange, ACO family care and nursing care collaboration ; (3) digital health effects and comparative benefits; (4) consumer health IT time, money and quality; (5) health care consumers, quality, transparency, and Social media.

Speaker Profile：

　　Ritu Agarwal is Senior Associate Dean for Research, Professor and the Robert H. Smith Dean’s Chair of Information Systems at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the founder and Director of the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems at the Smith School. Dr. Agarwal has published over 100 papers on health informatics and information technology management topics in journals such as Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Management Science, Communications of the ACM, Journal of Management Information Systems, Health Affairs, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, and IEEE Transactions, and has made presentations at a variety of national and international conferences. Her current research is focused on the use of IT in healthcare settings, health analytics, technology-enabled strategic transformations in various industrial sectors, and consumer behavior in technology-mediated settings. Professor Agarwal was the Editor-in-Chief of Information Systems Research for a 6 year term from 2011 to 2016. Previously she served three year terms as Senior Editor at MIS Quarterly and Associate Editor for Management Science. She was a member of the INFORMS board as Vice President for Subdivisions from 2004 to 2006, and served as a Vice President in the Association for Information Systems from 2002 to 2005. She served as a Standing Member of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s expert review panel on Healthcare Effectiveness and Outcomes Research for the period 2010-2012.  Dr. Agarwal was the NSF ADVANCE Professor for 2012-2013 for the Smith School.  In 2011 she became a Fellow of the Association for Information Systems, and also received the University of Maryland Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award.  In 2013 she received the title of Distinguished Fellow from the Information Systems Society of INFORMS. She has held leadership positions in a number of major professional conferences during her career, including Program Chair for the International Conference on Information Systems.  She is the Conference Co-Chair for the International Conference on Information Systems in 2017.  She is a member of ACM, AIS, INFORMS, and the Academy of Management.