Extending e-Health Infrastructures with Lightweight IT

Our interest in this paper is to understand the interplay between large technological programs and smaller innovation projects, i.e. how a small project may enter and change the larger structure. In our e-health context we conceptualise this as the interplay between heavyweight and lightweight IT. Our research questions are, how does an innovation initiative develop within an established information infrastructure, and how can we overcome the barriers for interplay between heavyweight and lightweight technologies? Our empirical evidence is a case study in the health care sector in Norway, where we investigated a mega-program called Digital Renewal, and a small lightweight initiative called Medicloud. The theoretical lens was actor-network theory and we offer two insights. First, we identify a set of barriers for fruitful interplay between heavyweight and lightweight IT. Second, we show that these barriers may be overcome by a careful combination of technical and organisational solutions, in order to stabilise a new network as a part of the larger information infrastructure.

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