Investigating integrated socio-technical approaches to health informatics

The paper explores the socio-technical approaches being developed in the Center for Health Informatics and Computing (CHIC) for addressing issues within healthcare that necessitate the integration of information systems with clinical and managerial development. A brief description of the health provision in the UK is given as a background to understanding the need for integrated interventions and approaches in health informatics. Three interlinked approaches are discussed: The Soft Information Systems and Technologies Methodology (SISTeM), Participative Simulation Modeling, and Stakeholder Analysis. A discussion is then provided of how they relate to each other and potential synergies. How they form part of the current and future research agenda within CHIC is then presented. The paper concludes with the argument that, as a result of the nature of healthcare, any health informatics intervention, if it is to be effective, has to be based on integrated socio-technical approaches.

[1]  Lucas D. Introna,et al.  Privacy in the Information Age: Stakeholders, Interests and Values , 1999, Journal of business ethics : JBE.

[2]  Athanasia Pouloudi,et al.  Conflicting Concern Over the Privacy of Electronic Medical Records in the Nhsnet , 1997, Business ethics.

[3]  A. Pouloudi,et al.  Stakeholder identification in inter-organizational systems: gaining insights for drug use management systems , 1997 .

[4]  S. D. Roberts,et al.  Simulation Modeling and Health-care Decision Making , 1993, Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making.

[5]  Athanasia Pouloudi,et al.  Aspects of the stakeholder concept and their implications for information systems development , 1999, Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences. 1999. HICSS-32. Abstracts and CD-ROM of Full Papers.

[6]  L. Preston,et al.  The Stakeholder Theory of the Corporation: Concepts, Evidence, and Implications , 1995 .

[7]  O. Jonasson,et al.  Waiting in line: should selected patients ever be moved up? , 1989, Transplantation proceedings.

[8]  B. Hochstrasser,et al.  Controlling It Investment: Strategy and Management , 1992 .

[9]  Ray J. Paul,et al.  Simulating economic factors in adjuvant breast cancer treatment , 2000, J. Oper. Res. Soc..

[10]  Ruth Davies,et al.  Planning resources for renal services throughout UK using simulation , 1998, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[11]  R. Freeman.  Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach , 2010 .

[12]  David E. Avison,et al.  Information Systems Development: Methodologies, Techniques and Tools , 1988 .

[13]  C. Atkinson,et al.  Transforming a hospital through growing, not building, an electronic patient record system. , 1998, Methods of information in medicine.

[14]  Michael Pidd,et al.  Tools for thinking , 1996 .

[15]  G. Walsham.  Actor-network theory and IS research: current status and future prospects , 1997 .

[16]  J Karnon,et al.  Selecting a decision model for economic evaluation: a case study and review , 1998, Health care management science.

[17]  B. Latour.  Science in Action , 1987 .

[18]  M. Lynn.  Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences , 1996 .

[19]  M. Callon.  Techno-economic Networks and Irreversibility , 1990 .

[20]  Ray J. Paul.  Outpatient clinics , 1995 .

[21]  R. Anderson,et al.  NHS-wide networking and patient confidentiality , 1995, BMJ.

[22]  Christopher J. Atkinson,et al.  The ‘Soft Information Systems and Technologies Methodology’ (SISTeM): an actor network contingency approach to integrated development , 2000, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[23]  Athanasia Pouloudi,et al.  Studying the Translations of NHSnet , 2001, J. Organ. End User Comput..

[24]  Lucas D. Introna.  Management, Information and Power , 1997 .

[25]  P. Beynon-Davies,et al.  Information systems ‘failure’: the case of the London Ambulance Service's Computer Aided Despatch project , 1995 .

[26]  Luc Delesie,et al.  Bridging the gap between clinicians and health managers , 1998, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[27]  Mikko Ruohonen,et al.  Stakeholders of strategic information systems planning: theoretical concepts and empirical examples , 1991, J. Strateg. Inf. Syst..

[28]  Mark S. Roberts,et al.  Markov process-based Monte Carlo simulation: a tool for modeling complex disease and its application to the timing of liver transplantation , 1992, WSC '92.

[29]  Kalle Lyytinen,et al.  Information systems failures—a survey and classification of the empirical literature , 1988 .