Adoption of ICT in Rural Medical General Practices in Australia

Abstract

ICT has been used in medical General Practice throughout Australia now for some years, but although most General Practices make use of ICT for administrative purposes such as billing, prescribing and medical records, many individual General Practitioners themselves do not make full use of these ICT systems for clinical purposes. The decisions taken in the adoption of ICT in general practice are very complex, and involve many actors, both human and non-human. This means that actor-network theory offers a most suitable framework for its analysis. This article investigates how GPs in a rural Division of General Practice not far from Melbourne considered the adoption and use of ICT. The study reported in the article shows that, rather than characteristics of the technology itself, it is often seemingly unimportant human issues that determine if and how ICT is used in General Practice.