Structuring technological information for technology roadmapping: data mining approach

Most research on technology roadmapping has focused on its practical applications and the development of methods to enhance its operational process. Thus, despite a demand for well-supported, systematic information, little attention has been paid to how/which information can be utilised in technology roadmapping. Therefore, this paper aims at proposing a methodology to structure technological information in order to facilitate the process. To this end, eight methods are suggested to provide useful information for technology roadmapping: summary, information extraction, clustering, mapping, navigation, linking, indicators and comparison. This research identifies the characteristics of significant data that can potentially be used in roadmapping, and presents an approach to extracting important information from such raw data through various data mining techniques including text mining, multi-dimensional scaling and K-means clustering. In addition, this paper explains how this approach can be applied in each step of roadmapping. The proposed approach is applied to develop a roadmap of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology to illustrate the process practically.     

A functional approach for studying technological progress: Application to information technology

This paper develops and assesses a broad functional category approach to arriving at metrics for assessing technological progress. The approach is applied to three functional categories of information technology — storage, transportation and transformation by first building a 100 plus year database for each of the three functional categories. The results indicate generally continuous progress for each functional category independent of the specific underlying technological artifacts dominating at different times. Thus, the empirical results reported in this study indicate that the functional category approach offers a more stable and reliable methodology for assessing longer time technological progress trends. Therefore, this approach offers the promise of being more useful in technological forecasting for large-scale change even as its ability to forecast specific dominant technological trajectories has been compromised.     

Adoption of health information technologies: the case of a wireless monitor for diabetes and obesity patients

This paper explores what determines the adoption of health information technologies through the use of a case study of a wireless service prototype developed for patients with diabetes and obesity. A technology acceptance model was used as the basis for developing the theoretical framework, which was later tested through a field study. Results indicated that the usefulness of an e-health service was affected by the quality of service, its compatibility with users’ lifestyle, the quality of support, the quality of information presented in the service, usage time, image, accessibility, and ease-of-use characteristics of the service. Designers should develop services that do not require much usage time as users do not want to spend much time using the service. In addition, users should be able to access data presented in the service quickly and easily when they need it. Customisable menu items and short cut keys can be used to make data access quick and easy.