Health Information Management: Integrating Information Technology ...

INTRODUCTION 3
touch upon the deployment of IT in the organization—whether at the strategic or
the implementation level.
A READER’S GUIDE
This book focuses on what we call ‘Patient Care Information Systems’ (PCIS):
all those systems that are used primarily by health care professionals and
patients, and that are primarily oriented at the support of their tasks (such as
electronic patient records, order communication systems, patient cards, patient
information systems). Systems that bridge the primary care process and
secondary work processes in health care organizations, such as management
information systems and registration systems for scientific research are included.
Systems that primarily focus on financial administration, human resource
management and so forth are not addressed here.
This is not an ordinary handbook. Significant parts of this book are not written
in the form of ‘how to’ manuals, but are aimed at providing an understanding of
the tasks of information management; of the organizational processes and
management of design, implementation and evaluation of PCISs. Subsequently,
these and other chapters also give concrete guidelines for (information)
managers and professionals to handle these tasks.
We argue, maybe a bit counter-intuitively, that those readers whose
responsibilities are not primarily oriented towards information management
concentrate first and foremost on the more conceptual chapters. A core insight of
this book is that many PCIS projects run to the ground because of wrong
expectations of what these technologies can do (at the level of the workfloor and
for the organization), and how their implementation should be managed. The
book touches upon the familiar high hopes and dreams surrounding information
technology, and the frustrations of professionals when these high hopes cannot
be realized instantly (‘my nephew can do this in one evening!’). Since the
conceptual chapters are full with concrete examples and are directly oriented
towards the real-life issues that managers and professionals face in their daily,
information-intensive work, these chapters (concentrated in Part I of this book)
are not ‘difficult’ or ‘dry’.
Part I, then, ‘Understanding health care work and the role of IT’ attempts to
underscore the strategic importance of IT, the nature of IT and its development,
and the nature of health care work. It will push the reader to understand
the phenomenal challenges of creating true synergy between health care work
practices and PCIS systems. Simultaneously, it will set high stakes for the
ambitions that can and will have to be pursued in twenty-first century health care.
Chapter 2 focuses on the nature of information technology innovation.
Through a historical account of the paper-based patient-centred record, and the
subsequent quest for its electronic sequel, the entanglement of information
technology, information management and its social and organizational context is
emphasized.