Background: Mobile health has provided new and exciting ways for patients to partake in their healthcare. Wearable devices are designed to collect the user’s health data, which can be analysed to provide information about the user’s health status. However, little research has been conducted that addresses privacy and information security issues of these devices. Objective: To investigate the privacy and information security issues to which users are exposed when using wearable health devices. Method: The study used a cross-sectional survey approach to collect data from a convenience sample of 106 respondents. Results: Half of the respondents did not understand the need to protect health information. There also appeared to be a general lack of awareness among respondents about the information security issues surrounding their data collected by wearable devices. Conclusion: Users were not knowledgeable about the privacy risks that their data are exposed to or how these data are protected once collected. Implications: Users of wearable devices that collect personal information about health need to be educated about privacy and information security issues to which they are exposed when using these devices.

Background: South Africa is planning to implement the National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme in the near future. The NHI is intended to improve the accessibility of quality health care services for all South African citizens. For the NHI to achieve this objective, an electronic health record (EHR) system to register and track patients who visit different health care providers will have to be developed.Aim: To identify critical success factors for the implementation of EHRs in South Africa’s public health care sector.Setting: This study reviewed studies on EHR implementation in African countries published between 2006 and 2017.Methods: The study made use of a systematic literature review to identify barriers to the implementation of EHRs in the public health care sector.Results: Fifteen articles were included in the study. The study identified technical, social and environmental barriers to the implementation of EHRs. The barriers could further be broken down into lack of supporting infrastructure; user training and commitment; political influence or strategy; legislation and regulations; and the lack of a framework for implementation and management of EHRs. The study suggests six main recommendations for the successful implementation of EHRs in South Africa’s public health care sector.Conclusion: The study recommended investing in alternative infrastructure facilities, incentivising the health informatics field to attract and retain information and communication technology professionals and to encourage the participation of all stakeholders in the development process to develop context-relevant e-health implementation strategies, legislation and frameworks. Government should also allocate separate budgets for e-health projects.

Web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis, can play a key role in promoting interaction, delivering education and providing communication between students. However, most of the existing literature does not seem to consider relationships between designing wiki-based learning activities and the student acceptance of this technology. The purpose of the study was to investigate the acceptance of students when making use of wikis in an undergraduate course at a university in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The study made use of a quantitative approach whereby an online questionnaire was distributed to 113 students involved in an undergraduate course. A forty per cent response rate was recorded while data were analysed making use of descriptive and inferential statistics. The study found that the majority of the students did experience the wiki as useful to improve collaboration in the course, however, there are fears about content being vandalised and plagiarised. Therefore, students will not voluntarily make use of the wiki despite the numerous advantages the technology can offer. The study recommends that students should be educated on the potential benefits of a wiki to improve collaboration before it is implemented in order to positively impact the perceptions and use by the students.

The South African Journal of Information Management explores the latest developments and trends in information and knowledge management to offer research that can be used to further the application of sound information and knowledge management practice.