Information Systems and Healthcare XXX: Charting a Strategic Path for Health Information Technology

Abstract

Despite both the slow diffusion of information technology (IT) throughout health organizations and the high cost of implementation, organizations must focus on key strategic applications that deliver high quality care at lower costs. Identifying the strategic applications that support important healthcare processes is challenging. In this article we propose a framework for developing this high level perspective of strategic health information technology (HIT) applications. We then classify into the components of the framework numerous HIT applications and initiatives reported in the media. Based on an existing framework, we identify two critical dimensions that capture two important characteristics of a healthcare delivery process, namely, the degree of mediation and the degree of collaboration. A healthcare process with a high degree of mediation involves a large series of activities in a sequential manner. Processes with a low degree of mediation “understand” that most participants in care delivery contribute directly, often simultaneously, to the final result. The underlying principle for this dimension is the level of functionality of the application. The degree of collaboration refers to the extent to which information is exchanged among the participants in a process. Depending on the degree of exchange, one can identify processes as having higher or lower degrees of collaboration. The underlying principle for this dimension is the degree of interoperability among the applications. Strategic HIT applications lie on a continuum path from a low-high degree of mediation to a low-high degree of collaboration. Our examples show that healthcare delivery organizations evolve their HIT from ad-hoc isolated systems to interoperable, integrated digital health systems. The strategic framework provides a high level perspective of HIT while assisting in the evaluation of potential HIT candidates for implementation.

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