19 January 2007
On Friday, 26 Jan. 2007, the doctoral thesis research study, Managing the information systems resource in health care: Findings from two IS projects by Jarmo Tähkäpää, Master of Economic Sciences, shall be examined at Turku School of Economics. The management of information systems in the public health service is reviewed in this thesis study as respective to the information systems field. In this research, attention is given to problems which are connected with the initialisation of information systems in organizations. The research results provide background support for those in charge of public health in the planning of new information system projects.
In his study, Jarmo Tähkäpää inspects critical areas which the management of the public health care organization should concentrate on during the information systems project. “Applying solutions used in managing private enterprises to the public health services is hardly always successful,” Mr Tähkäpää emphasizes. “For this reason, information systems projects in public health care requires their own managerial perspective focused on the special operational features of the public sector.”
Four critical areas in the management of information systems projects
Resource-based thinking is applied in this work within the public sector environment. Competition thinking is still rather unfamiliar within the public sector: on the other hand, however, efficiency and cost-savings have begun to be increasingly emphasized. Resource-based thinking has been previously utilized in assessing the achievement of competitive advantage in various fields, particularly in the private sector. In this research, four pivotal areas were found which it would be important to concentrate on and in which resources should be directed within the management of public health service information systems projects.
The first critical area is formed by the communications with the systems supplier. The processes of public health care and the internalisation of these processes represent a great challenge to outsiders. Public health has long been an independent area that is difficult for the outsider to access. “In the public health service, the special character of the field is frequently emphasized,” Mr Tähkäpää notes. “A high degree of professional skill is also required in the IT field. Cooperation between these two special areas can occasionally be problematic.”
Tähkäpää has localized the second potential problem area as the deficiencies found in strategic information systems management. The optimization of impacts from information systems requires the planning of long-term strategic planning, which the public sector is not accustomed to dealing with in the same manner as the private sector. The neglect of strategic planning results in a system that is severed from other activities, and there is a risk that commitment to the development and use of the system is not obtained.
The effects of the information system on the administrative structures of the organization should also be carefully considered. Final alternatives in the management of data systems are the development of the organization's internal IT department or the outsourcing of information systems. In any case, the various alternatives require new types of resources for public health care. In addition, it must be recognized that an information system alone is insufficient to improve the efficiency of an organization’s functions: rather, initialisation of the information system also requires the configuration of old processes in the organization.
As the fourth area of the study, it is emphasized that the benefits and detriments of any information system should always be assessed from the perspective of the public health organization’s various interest groups. The complexity of the decision-making process and the large number of interest groups involved are special features of the public sector. In data system investments, it is essential to determine whether the investment has succeeded or failed. “The determination of success is affected by how emphasis is put into the information systems in the future and how commitment is made to them,” Mr Tähkäpää points out. Success should really be determined from the view of many interest groups. It’s not enough that only the users of the system or the organization managers are asked about their experiences.”
Concrete individual cases in the background
The empirical material for the study has been gathered from the Paimio-Sauvo Health Authority Area as well as the Primus project of the Turku City Public Health Department.
A new patient administration system was taken into use within the Paimio-Sauvo Health Authority Area in 1997, and an information system strategy was needed for its development. A new data administration strategy based on the organization’s operational strategy was implemented in cooperation with the organization’s management.
At the turn of the new millennium, the Primus project was implemented within the Turku City Public Health Department. This was a comprehensive initialisation project for information systems, connected with, for instance, the Department’s transfer of manual processing of patient data to an electronic patient administration system.
The doctoral thesis can be read at:
http://info.tse.fi/julkaisut/vk/Ae1_2007.pdf
Additional information:
Jarmo Tähkäpää
tel. +358 2 481 4413 and +358 400 644 556
email: jarmo.tahkapaa(a)tse.fi