An Analysis of the Evolving Intellectual Structure of Health Information Systems Research in the Information Systems Discipline

The rapid evolution of health information systems (Health IS) research has led to many significantcontributions. However, while the Health IS subset of information systems (IS) scholarship hasconsiderably grown over the past two decades, this growth hasled to questions regarding the currentintellectual structure of this area of inquiry. In an effort to more fully understand how Health ISresearchhas contributed to the IS discipline, and what this may mean for future Health IS researchin the IS domain, we conduct an in-depth evaluation of Health IS research published in mainstreamIS journals. We apply citation analysis, latent semantic analysis (LSA), and social network analysis(SNA) to ourdata setof Health IS articles in order to: (1) identify Health IS research themes andthematic shifts, (2)determine which Health IS research themes are cohesive (versus disparate), (3)identify which Health IS research themes are central (versus peripheral), (4) clarify networks ofresearchers (i.e., thought leaders) contributing to these research themes, and(5) provide insights intothe connection of Health ISresearchto its reference disciplines. Overall, we contribute a systematicdescription and explanation of the intellectual structure ofHealth ISresearchand highlight how theexisting intellectual structure of Health ISresearchprovides opportunities for future research

Essays on Health Information Technology: Insights from Analyses of Big Datasets

The current dissertation provides an examination of health information technology (HIT) by analyzing big datasets. It contains two separate essays focused on: (1) the evolving intellectual structure of the healthcare informatics (HI) and healthcare IT (HIT) scholarly communities, and (2) the impact of social support exchange embedded in social interactions on health promotion outcomes associated with online health community use. Overall, this dissertation extends current theories by applying a unique combination of methods (natural language processing, machine learning, social network analysis, and structural equation modeling etc.) to the analyses of primary datasets. The goal of the first study is to obtain a full understanding of the underlying dynamics of the intellectual structures of HI and its sub-discipline HIT. Using multiple statistical methods including citation and co-citation analysis, social network analysis (SNA), and latent semantic analysis (LSA), this essay shows how HIT research has emerged in IS journals and distinguished itself from the larger HI context. The research themes, intellectual leadership, cohesion of these themes and networks of researchers, and journal presence revealed in our longitudinal intellectual structure analyses foretell how, in particular, these HI and HIT fields have evolved to date and also how they could evolve in the future. Our findings identify which research streams are central (versus peripheral) and which are cohesive (as opposed to disparate). Suggestions for vibrant areas of future research emerge from our analysis. The second part of the dissertation focuses on comprehensively understanding the effect of social support exchange in online health communities on individual members’ health promotion outcomes. This study examines the effectiveness of online consumer-to-consumer social support exchange on health promotion outcomes via analyses of big health data. Based on previous research, we propose a conceptual framework which integrates social capital theory and social support theory in the context of online health communities and test it through a quantitative field study and multiple analyses of a big online health community dataset. Specifically, natural language processing and machine learning techniques are utilized to automate content analysis of digital trace data. This research not only extends current theories of social support exchange in online health communities, but also sheds light on the design and management of such communities