Conceptualizing an Anchor-Oriented Approach for Healthcare Systems Integration

The efforts undertaken by healthcare organisations to modernise their services have resulted in the development of disparate Healthcare Information Systems (HIS). Systems heterogeneity has an impact on the quality of the services provided to patients. Thus, the integration of HIS will result in improvement of the quality of care provided to patients. Although healthcare organisations have turned to Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technology to overcome their integration problems, they lag in applying EAI comparing to other sectors. Also, there is limited literature in this area, with the majority of it focusing on the adoption of EAI in healthcare. This paper proposes an actor-oriented approach, which the authors claim as novel as: (a) it identifies healthcare actors involved in EAI adoption process and (b) it is combined with the factors influencing EAI adoption. This approach is significant, as it (a) extends existing EAI adoption models by incorporating an actor-oriented analysis and (b) enhances the decision-making in this area, by supporting a more detailed level of analysis of the factors that the multiple healthcare actors perceive

Towards a Conceptual Framework of Actors and Factors Affecting the EAI Adoption in Healthcare Organizations

The non-integrated nature of Healthcare Information Systems (HIS) is strongly associated with a reduction in the quality of care and the medical errors that occur. In particular, around 80,000 people die per year or paralyse in Australia due to problems related to medical errors and are mainly caused by the non-integrated nature of HIS. There is therefore a real need to integrate the Information Technology (IT) infrastructures, to improve the quality of care provided. During the last years much emphasis has been given on Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technology to bridge heterogeneous systems. Although EAI is being widely used by public and private organisations, it is underutilised in the area of healthcare. Thus, it is of high importance to investigate this area and result in research that contributes towards successful adoption of EAI. Currently, much of the literature on EAI in healthcare has focused on the identification of the factors that influence its adoption. In this paper, the authors attempt to extend this research area, by identifying the actors involved in the EAI adoption process. In doing so, the paper describes the causal relationships among the healthcare actors and factors that influence its adoption. Thus, the paper results in a novel approach that: (a) identifies the healthcare actors that are involved in the EAI adoption process and (b) combines these actors with the factors influencing the adoption of EAI. The proposed approach is significant, as it (a) extends the existing models on EAI adoption by incorporating an actor-oriented analysis and (b) might enhance the decision-making process for EAI adoption by supporting a more detailed level of analysis

Benefits and barriers related to eai adoption: the case of a healthcare organisation

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technology has emerged to overcome integration problems at different levels such as process and data. Although, many public and private organisations have successfully implemented EAI solutions, the adoption of EAI in healthcare organisations is slow and problematic. The research that has been published in this area remains limited and has mainly focused on factors (e.g. benefits, barriers etc) that influence the decision making process for EAI adoption in healthcare. Notwithstanding, the implications of EAI have yet to be assessed, leaving scope for timeliness and novel research. The main contribution of this paper is the identification of the benefits and barriers associated with the EAI adoption in healthcare. In addition, this research has identified and mapped healthcare actors to these benefits and barriers. Therefore, it supports the decision making process as it results in more informed practices and thus speeds up EAI adoption in healthcare. This is of high importance as 23725 human lives are lost in UK every year due to the limitations of the non-integrated healthcare Information Technology (IT) infrastructures. The proposed approach is significant and novel as it (a) improves the realisation of EAI adoption benefits and barriers, (b) enhances the analysis of EAI adoption in healthcare by incorporating an actororiented approach and (c) facilitates healthcare organisations and decision-makers in realizing EAI adoption benefits and barriers. Thus, it significantly contributes to the body of knowledge and practice in this area. Thus, it provides sufficient support to the management and speeds up the adoption process

Evaluating Integration Approaches Benefits Adopted by Healthcare Organizations

Healthcare organizations consist of a large number of disparate information systems (IS). These have been deployed to support specific needs of healthcare organisations. The information sharing among these disparate and heterogeneous systems has always been one of the most prominent issues for the management. As every day people die in hospitals, due to medical errors, which is generally causes due to non-integrated IT infrastructure. Various integration approaches have been adopted to solve integration problems. Although, some of them have partially supported the integration efforts, there are still many issues remaining to be solved such as level of integration, interpretability, cost reduction, and patients’ data security. There is marketplace confusion in healthcare organisations, due to the variety of integration approaches that support the integration of healthcare IS. This paper seeks to describe the current deployed integration approaches in healthcare organisations. In doing so, the benefits of these approaches are evaluated. This evaluation will help researchers to better understand issues surrounding the benefits of integration approaches

The impact of enterprise application integration on information system lifecycles

Information systems (IS) have become the organisational fabric for intra-and inter-organisational collaboration in business. As a result, there is mounting pressure from customers and suppliers for a direct move away from disparate systems operating in parallel towards a more common shared architecture. In part, this has been achieved through the emergence of new technology that is being packaged into a portfolio of technologies known as enterprise application integration (EAI). Its emergence however, is presenting investment decision-makers charged with the evaluation of IS with an interesting challenge. The integration of IS in-line with the needs of the business is extending their identity and lifecycle, making it difficult to evaluate the full impact of the system as it has no definitive start and/or end. Indeed, the argument presented in this paper is that traditional life cycle models are changing as a result of technologies that support their integration with other systems. In this paper, the need for a better understanding of EAI and its impact on IS lifecycles are discussed and a classification framework proposed.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Grant Ref: (GR/R08025) and Australian Research Council (DP0344682)