A functional affordance and boundary spanning based exploration of a successfully adopted healthcare IS
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2016-03-16
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Towson University. Department of Computer and Information Sciences
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Abstract
Information Systems (IS) have become critical for healthcare organizations. However, implementation and adoption of integrated healthcare IS continues to be a non-trivial task. The use and implementation of healthcare IS has increased considerably in the past decade, particularly because of their perceived criticality to quality patient care. However, healthcare IS development projects have been marred with reports of failures, leading to a lesser percentage of successful adoption. This research argues that such failures emerge from inadequate development of linkages between the behavioral context of the organization and specification models developed for a typical healthcare IS. Consequently, this dissertation suggests the use of affordances as a theoretical lens that could potentially mitigate such issue. In addition, this study argues that a successful use of IS within a healthcare organization also requires the organization’s IT-group to act as the boundary-spanning agent that translates the meaningful use of the IS. This premise is examined through an empirical investigation of a successfully adopted healthcare IS developed in Saudi Arabia. Preliminary exploration identifies an initial set of affordances that could be used to develop design prescriptions for a more robust IS. The theoretical narratives further elaborate on the boundary spanning role played by the IT group of the organization in developing a meaningful healthcare IS.