Stimulating the diffusion of EDI in health care

Abstract

Even though EDI has proved to be extremely advantageous for inter-organisational communication in areas such as automobile manufacturing and trade, its diffusion in the field of health care is rather poor. As several studies show, when organisations decide whether or not to adopt EDI, they base their decisions largely on what their (business) partners are doing with respect to EDI, and on the ROI of the investment required in EDI. The adoption decision is not primarily based on the specific characteristics of EDI, nor is it greatly influenced by factors such as legal issues, organisational implementation problems, or technical difficulties, though present. This paper will present a synergetic model based on these facts. The result will be an analytical tool which models and explains the diffusion of EDI standards and from which we can derive marketing recommendations aimed at stimulating the diffusion of EDI in health care.