Organizational Implementation of Healthcare Information Systems

Abstract

Health-care information systems (HCIS) intervene in medical reasoning and function. In a continuously changing environment health-care professionals find themselves overwhelmed with fast pacing advances both in information technology (IT) and in medical practice. Use of evidence-based medicine (EBM) is flourishing and the coupling between HCIS and EBM opens new frontiers for both. Yet the problems that relate to HCIS development and implementation remain the same. The problems of today have been problems of yesterday and are likely to stay, or evolve, in the future. The chapter takes the reader to a journey around the factors that are involved in HCIS development and implementation. Discussion is mostly non-technical and focuses on organization and individual readiness to adopt HCIS technology in the workplace. Discussion formalizes to a concrete framework, which is accompanied by a formal statistical methodology on how to apply the framework in practice. The proposed framework integrates existing formal models related to technology readiness and acceptance, EBM, organization climate and computer knowledge and skills.