Antecedents of the People and Organizational Aspects of Medical Informatics: Review of the Literature

Abstract

People and organizational issues are critical in both implementing medical informatics systems and in dealing with the altered organizations that new systems often create. The people and organizational issues area--like medical informatics itself--is a blend of many disciplines. The academic disciplines of psychology, sociology, social psychology, social anthropology, organizational behavior and organizational development, management, and cognitive sciences are rich with research with significant potential to ease the introduction and on-going use of information technology in today's complex health systems. These academic areas contribute research data and core information for better understanding of such issues as the importance of and processes for creating future direction; managing a complex change process; effective strategies for involving individuals and groups in the informatics effort; and effectively managing the altered organization. This article reviews the behavioral and business referent disciplines that can potentially contribute to improved implementations and on-going management of change in the medical informatics arena.

Dialectics of Resilience: A Multi–Level Analysis of a Telehealth Innovation

“…Lorenzi et al, 1997;Aarts et al 1998;Davidson and Chismar, 1999;Berg 2001;Lorenzi and Riley, 2003). Conflicts between emerging and existing work practices are well documented as main reasons of user resistance (Lorenzi et al, 1997;Aarts et al, 1998;Berg, 2001;Kaplan et al, 2001;Lorenzi and Riley, 2003), and other studies have also emphasized insufficient IT infrastructure within the healthcare sector (Anderson, 1997;Fitzmaurice, 1998) and critical issues related to reimbursement and alignment with regulations (Fitzmaurice, 1998;Tanriverdi and Iacono, 1998). However, it is rarely documented how these issues relate and interact in complex processes of adopting healthcare innovations across networks of collaborating hospitals.…”

“…Tanriverdi and Iacono, 1998;Dwivedi et al 2001), people and organizational issues (e.g. Lorenzi et al, 1997;Aarts et al 1998;Berg, 2001), social communication patterns (Davidson, 2000), organizational structure and culture (Bangert and Doktor, 2003), and enactments of different structures of reference by different stakeholder groups (Constantinides and Barrett, 2006). These studies point to the importance of organizational processes in explaining the success and failure of telehealth innovations.…”

Barriers to the use of e-health technology in nurse practitioner_patient consultations

“…10,13 Infrastructure issues aside, insufficient attention has been paid to the 'people' side of technology transfer when designing and implementing EHT. 7,[14][15][16] It is necessary to assess and customise the fit between implemented IT systems, nurses' established work processes and practice time constraints, followed by careful planning of change management strategies, backed up by on-the-job training and support. [17][18][19] Unfortunately, available evidence demonstrates that 63% of interested nurses have not been involved in any NPfIT consultation or planning.…”

Pre-Analytical Workstations as a Tool for Reducing Laboratory Errors

“…There is a large literature on what is needed to achieve success by managing change (31)(32)(33)(34). It is beyond the scope of this paper to summarise their findings and success factors.…”