Introduction special issue on IT adoption and evaluation in healthcare

This special issue’s coverage truly reflects the spectrum of research areas within Ken Trimmer’s domain. The development of these papers from initial submission also reflects Dr. Trimmer’s ability to aptly match submitted paper to a review team that could insightfully mature the work. This web of scientists coming together in this special issue and in other efforts co-collaborated on elaborated into a collegial force in collectively extending knowledge in the healthcare adoption domain. Healthcare still has major difficulties in implementing e-health successfully. The first paper in this special issue from Junhua Li, Holly Seale, Pradeep Ray, Amina Tariq and C. Raina MacIntyre handles the preparedness for e-health in pandemic situations. With a preparedness framework the authors show a way to maximise e-health benefits. When e-health is adopted it often leads to complex inter-organisational systems. Stefan Schellhammer, Kai Reimers and Stefan Klein show information infrastructures in Australia and Ireland. A cross-case comparison demonstrates that successful standardisation and reliance on proprietary systems not only influences the future of the electronic ordering systems but also shapes emerging information infrastructures in healthcare

Explaining stranded diffusion by combining the user-IT-success factors (USIT) and adopter categories:the case of Electronic prescription systems for general practitioners

Although diffusion of new IT in healthcare does not seem to level of, successes are reported frequently. Many of these successful cases experience enthusiastic use of the innovation by a limited group of physicians or other users. This paper explains stranded diffusion by differentiating the match between user and IT s' to adopter categories (the User-IT-match or USIT-model). This match is described by the (sub)- dimensions of affection/resistance, relevance, requirements and resources. Once the sub-dimensions are determined for all adopter groups, it might become clear that different sub-dimensions play a role for every adopter group, and thus in every successive stage of the diffusion process. The diffusion process strands if there is no match with the sub-dimensions that play a role for the adopter category that was to adopt the innovation in that stage. A total of 56-case-studies on the diffusion of an Electronic Prescription System (EPS) for general practitioners in the Netherlands was used to test the explanatory power of these factors. We conclude that USIT is of high value to determine adopter-category specific diffusion problems, and thus to understand stranding diffusion. The relevance-factor has the biggest impact within USIT. The paper includes discussion of the limits of the model and suggestions for elaboration. The paper discusses diffusion problems that are specific for this EPS

Dynamic and emerging information systems strategy formulation and implementation

Early attempts to formulate information systems (IS) strategies concentrated on the analytical task of deriving IS strategies from business plans. The limitations of the static plans that often resulted from these formal studies were, however, soon discovered. The critics suggested informal and incremental planning to ensure flexibility, creativity and strategic thinking to comprise emergent strategies as well as planned strategies. In previous IS planning research, there appears to be a contradiction between the published planning methods and the generally held views about effective implementation of IS planning process. The explicit methods described in IS literature predominantly assume a comprehensive IS planning process. Despite the fact that many researchers consider incremental approaches to be more effective, methods that can be used to facilitate incremental IS planning are few, not detailed enough and not comprehensive