Assessing the Need of Decision-making Frameworks to Guide the Adoption of Health Information Systems in Healthcare

Abstract

Hospital Information System (HIS) is important in the healthcare industry as it supports a wide range of highly specialized health-care tasks, services and provide high-quality patient care. Adoption of HIS is one of the key decisions by hospital management, yet the function of hospital decision-makers within the area of new technology adoption, specifically the decision-making processes in the adoption of HIS remains unsupported. To investigate this phenomenon, this paper identifies HIS decision-making theories, their short-coming of adoption in healthcare organisations and decision-making facets that influence the adoption. These review will shed some light for future researchers to conceptualize, distinguish and comprehend the underlying HIS decision-making models and theories that may affect the future application of HIS adoption. A literature search was conducted to identify studies presenting HIS decision-making adoption theories/models in a healthcare environment. From synthesis of 26 studies, we identified five major facets that provides a structure to organize and capture information on the decision-making and adoption of HIS. The themes presented here provide a starting point in understanding the decision-making adoption theories, their major facets and their short-coming in adopting HIS. This will facilitate our future research on decision-making framework for the adoption of HIS.