Tag Archive for: Technocentric-design

Patient Safety in Community Care: e-health systems and the Care of the Elderly at Home

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Handbook of Research on Patient Safety and Quality Care through Health Informatics

This chapter reviews a number of technologies used for remote care: telecare, telehealth, telemedicine, electronic patient record systems, and technologies to support mobile working.

Abstract:

The increasing number of elderly people in need of health and social care is putting pressure on current services to develop better ways of providing integrated care in the community. It is a widely held belief that e-health technologies have great potential in enabling and achieving this goal. This chapter reviews a number of technologies used for this purpose: telecare, telehealth, telemedicine, electronic patient record systems, and technologies to support mobile working. In each case, technocentric-design approaches have led to problematic implementations and failures to achieve adoption into the routine of delivering healthcare. An examination of attempts to implement major changes in the service delivery of integrated care shows that e-health technologies can be successfully implemented when they are seen as an intrinsic part of the creation of a complete system. However, the design process required for successful delivery of these services is challenging; it requires sustained and integrated development work by clinical staff and technologists coordinating their work on process changes, organisational developments, and technology implementations.

Patient Safety in Community Care: e-health systems and the Care of the Elderly at Home Ken Eason

Link to IGI Global

Eason K. D. and Waterson P.E Patient Safety in Community Care: e-health systems and the care of the elderly at home In Michel V., Gulliver S., Rosenorn-Lang D. and Currie W. (eds) Patient Safety and Quality Dimensions of Health Informatics. IGI Global 198-213

How to Fail When Introducing Electronic Technologies into Organisations

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The challenges of large scale IT projects viewed through the National Programme for IT – NPfIT

Abstract:
The history of computer applications is littered with examples of large and expensive IT systems failing when they were implemented in organisations. This paper illustrates how this happens by describing the case of the NPfIT, the National Programme for IT, in the UK National Health Service. It was introduced with a great fanfare in 2004 to standardize electronic patient records across the NHS and was ‘dismantled’ in 2011 having cost somewhere between £12 and £20 billion.

The paper concludes this programme encountered major problems because it adopted a top down, technocentric approach that led to a ‘one size does not fit all’ response from health agencies of widely different types. A major lesson is that these developments have to be treated not just as technical developments but as sociotechnical developments, i.e. the organisational and technical changes have to be treated in parallel and as interdependent entities. The paper offers six principles for the implementation of new technology into organisations that may improve the chances of users being able to harness the potential of new technology.

IEEE Explore Link

Eason K.D. How to fail when introducing electronic technologies into organisations. Proceedings of DESE 2016 (Developments in eSystems Engineering’, Liverpool September