A Theory for Classification of Health Care Organizations in the New Economy

  • Authors:

  • Vivian Vimarlund;Cecilia Sjö/berg;Toomas Timpka

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer and Information Science, Linkö/ping University, S-581 83 Linkö/ping, Sweden/ vivvi@ida.liu.se;Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems, Stockholm, Sweden;Department of Social Medicine, Linkö/ping University, Linkö/ping, Sweden

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Medical Systems
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

Most of the available studies into information technology (IT) have been limited to investigating specific issues, such as how IT can support decision makers distributing the information throughout health care organization, or how technology impacts organizational performance. In this study, for use in the planning of information system development projects, a theoretical model for the classification of health care organizations is proposed. We try to reflect the development in the contemporary digital economy by theoretically classifying health care organizations into three types, namely traditional, developing, and flexible. We describe traditional health care organizations as organizations with a centralized system for management and control. In developing health care organizations, IT is spread over the horizontal dimension and is used for coordinating the different parties throughout the organization. Finally, flexible health care organizations are those which work actively with the design of new health care organizational structure while they are designing the information system.