The business value of IT in healthcare.

With the rapid increase of healthcare expenditures and the parallel increase of doubts about the efficiency of current healthcare systems, due to increasing number of medical incidents and problems, decision- and policy-makers in healthcare industry have started looking for adopting new management practices and strategies to reduce costs and increase healthcare quality, in other words, maximizing the value and minimizing waste. Investing more on information technology has been one of these new strategies. At the same time, lean thinking and Lean Six Sigma promises have been appealing for healthcare, after achieving good results in different industries. However, due to its uniqueness, healthcare industry should have its own definition of “value” as it extends this concept beyond the operational level to cover sociotechnical aspects. Thus, the role that information technology can play to facilitate business value, and later value, in healthcare is discussed in this chapter. Also, lean and Lean Six Sigma in healthcare and their link to business value of IT are to be discussed, on a quest to draw a road map to better IT investments in healthcare to improve value generating in this industry.

[1]  V. Fuchs,et al.  Economics, values, and health care reform. , 1996, The American economic review.

[2]  Nirup M. Menon,et al.  The Effect of Information Technology Investments in Healthcare: A Longitudinal Study of its Lag, Duration, and Economic Value , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.

[3]  Rajiv Kohli,et al.  Information Technology Payoff in the Health-Care Industry: A Longitudinal Study , 2000, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[4]  Chen-Yang Cheng,et al.  Implementation of the Lean Six Sigma framework in non-profit organisations: A case study , 2012 .

[5]  William B. Rouse,et al.  Engineering perspectives on healthcare delivery: Can we afford technological innovation in healthcare? , 2009 .

[6]  J. Grossman,et al.  Building a Better Delivery System: A New Engineering/Health Care Partnership , 2005 .

[7]  Sarah Thomson,et al.  International profiles of health care systems, 2012 , 2012 .

[8]  E. Naveh,et al.  The moderate success of quality of care improvement efforts: three observations on the situation. , 2007, International journal for quality in health care : journal of the International Society for Quality in Health Care.

[9]  Wolfgang Dietrich,et al.  Are there time and cost savings by using telemanagement for patients on intensified insulin therapy?: A randomised, controlled trial , 2002, Comput. Methods Programs Biomed..

[10]  John C. Henderson,et al.  Strategic Alignment: Leveraging Information Technology for Transforming Organizations , 1999, IBM Syst. J..

[11]  William B Rouse,et al.  Engineering the system of healthcare delivery. Introduction. , 2010, Studies in health technology and informatics.

[12]  Sunder Kekre,et al.  Business Value of Information Technology: A Study of Electronic Data Interchange , 1995, MIS Q..

[13]  John P. S. Verver,et al.  Lean Six Sigma in Healthcare , 2006, Journal for healthcare quality : official publication of the National Association for Healthcare Quality.

[14]  Pamela S. Tolbert,et al.  Institutional Sources of Change in the Formal Structure of Organizations: The Diffusion of Civil Service Reform, 1880-1935 , 1983 .

[15]  M. Markus,et al.  Information technology and organizational change: causal structure in theory and research , 1988 .

[16]  Robert J. Kauffman,et al.  Modeling and Measuring the Business Value of Information Technology , 1988 .

[17]  Vernon J. Richardson,et al.  Returns on Investments in Information Technology: A Research Synthesis , 2002, J. Inf. Syst..

[18]  Nirup M. Menon,et al.  Productivity of Information Systems in the Healthcare Industry , 2000, Inf. Syst. Res..

[19]  Peter Weill,et al.  The Relationship Between Investment in Information Technology and Firm Performance: A Study of the Valve Manufacturing Sector , 1992, Inf. Syst. Res..

[20]  Leslie Hsu.  The Strategic Application of Information Technology in Healthcare Organizations , 1999 .

[21]  P. Hines,et al.  Learning to evolve: A review of contemporary lean thinking , 2004 .

[22]  I. Greener.  Healthcare in the UK: Understanding continuity and change , 2008 .

[23]  Shu Yu,et al.  Applying the technology acceptance model to explore public health nurses' intentions towards web-based learning: a cross-sectional questionnaire survey. , 2008, International journal of nursing studies.

[24]  Erik Brynjolfsson,et al.  The productivity paradox of information technology , 1993, CACM.

[25]  S I McClean,et al.  A critical look at Lean Thinking in healthcare , 2008, Quality & Safety in Health Care.

[26]  T. Kostova,et al.  Adoption of an Organizational Practice by Subsidiaries of Multinational Corporations: Institutional and Relational Effects , 2002 .

[27]  P. Bruun,et al.  Lean production and the Internet , 2004 .

[28]  David J. Collis,et al.  Can you say what your strategy is? , 2008, Harvard business review.

[29]  Nabeel A. Y. Al-Qirim,et al.  Championing telemedicine adoption and utilization in healthcare organizations in New Zealand , 2007, Int. J. Medical Informatics.

[30]  Anandhi S. Bharadwaj,et al.  A Resource-Based Perspective on Information Technology Capability and Firm Performance: An Empirical Investigation , 2000, MIS Q..

[31]  Rob Kling,et al.  Social Analyses of Computing: Theoretical Perspectives in Recent Empirical Research , 1980, CSUR.

[32]  Alfred Dupont Chandler,et al.  战略与结构 : 美国工商企业成长的若干篇章=strategy and structure : chapters in the history of the American industrial enterprise , 1962 .

[33]  Nir Menachemi,et al.  Opening the Black Box: Measuring Hospital Information Technology Capability , 2004, Health care management review.

[34]  E. Brynjolfsson,et al.  Paradox Lost? Firm-Level Evidence on the Returns to Information Systems Spending , 1996 .

[35]  Erik Brynjolfsson,et al.  Information Technology and Productivity: A Review of the Literature , 1996, Adv. Comput..

[36]  Nicolette de Keizer,et al.  Evaluation of general practitioner's time investment during a store-and-forward teledermatology consultation , 2007, Int. J. Medical Informatics.

[37]  P. Weill,et al.  Leveraging the New Infrastructure: How Market Leaders Capitalize on Information Technology , 1998 .

[38]  Hirotaka Takeuchi,et al.  Extreme Toyota: Radical Contradictions That Drive Success at the World's Best Manufacturer , 2008 .

[39]  Jan H. van Bemmel,et al.  Involving the patient: A prospective study on use, appreciation and effectiveness of an information system in head and neck cancer care , 2005, Int. J. Medical Informatics.

[40]  M. Hammer,et al.  The superefficient company. , 2001, Harvard business review.

[41]  T. Saaty,et al.  The Analytic Hierarchy Process , 1985 .

[42]  J. Antonakis,et al.  Could lean production job design be intrinsically motivating? Contextual, configurational, and levels-of-analysis issues , 2006 .

[43]  M. Kelley,et al.  Bridging the quality chasm , 2001, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[44]  R. Devol,et al.  An Unhealthy America:The Economic Burden of Chronic Disease , 2007 .

[45]  Seung Hee Ho,et al.  Patient satisfaction with telemedicine in home health services for the elderly , 2001, Int. J. Medical Informatics.

[46]  James P. Womack,et al.  Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation , 1996 .

[47]  John P. Glaser,et al.  The Strategic Application of Information Technology in Health Care Organizations , 2011 .

[48]  Rajiv Kohli,et al.  Performance Impacts of Information Technology: Is Actual Usage the Missing Link? , 2003, Manag. Sci..

[49]  Richard Janssen,et al.  Application of lean thinking to health care: issues and observations , 2009, International journal for quality in health care : journal of the International Society for Quality in Health Care.

[50]  M. Porter,et al.  Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-based Competition on Results , 2006 .

[51]  Lorin M. Hitt,et al.  Information Technology and Internal Firm Organization: An Exploratory Analysis , 1997, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[52]  Alastair Baker,et al.  Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century , 2001, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[53]  Dale Goodhue,et al.  Develop Long-Term Competitiveness through IT Assets , 1996 .

[54]  Marie-Pierre Gagnon,et al.  An adaptation of the theory of interpersonal behaviour to the study of telemedicine adoption by physicians , 2003, Int. J. Medical Informatics.

[55]  Christina Soh,et al.  How IT Creates Business Value: A Process Theory Synthesis , 1995, ICIS.

[56]  T. L. Saaty.  A Scaling Method for Priorities in Hierarchical Structures , 1977 .

[57]  Kenneth L. Kraemer,et al.  Review: Information Technology and Organizational Performance: An Integrative Model of IT Business Value , 2004, MIS Q..