Theme 4: Ecosystem Supports
A model of tradeoffs for understanding health information technology implementation
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Lead:
Craig Kuziemsky
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INNOVATION STAGE
Exploration
Health Innovation Focus
Health Technology Innovation & Commercialization
Population and Setting
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Technology and Intervention
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BENEFITS
For Users
Improved User Experience: Helps users anticipate and address potential disruptions to workflows, ensuring smoother transitions to new systems.
Increased Usability: Involves stakeholders in the design process, leading to health technology systems that better align with user needs.
Reduced Frustration and Resistance: Encourages training and preparation, helping users adapt more easily to changes. Encourages collaboration by addressing challenges in team-based care delivery.
For The System
Enhances the success of health technology implementations by minimizing unintended consequences. Improves system integration and collaboration across departments and user groups. Promotes safer, more efficient, and patient-centered care by addressing trade-offs proactively. Provides a framework for continuous learning and improvement in health technology design. By addressing these trade-offs systematically, this framework helps organizations achieve the full potential of health technology implementations while mitigating risks.
Project Theme Information
Implementing health technology often results in unintended consequences, such as workflow disruptions, user resistance, and increased workload. These challenges arise because of trade-offs between existing practices and the changes introduced by the technology. Without a proactive approach to identifying these trade-offs, healthcare organizations face system inertia, limiting their ability to fully benefit from digital health innovations.
The innovation is a proactive framework for understanding and addressing trade-offs in HIT implementation. This framework includes a structural model for analyzing HIT-mediated changes and identifies seven categories of trade-offs that occur during implementation. These trade-offs span individual workflows, group dynamics, technology integration, policy alignment, and ergonomic considerations.
The framework uses principles from Social Business Process Management (BPM) and qualitative analysis to study health technology implementation. It includes: Structural Model: Maps interactions across users, tasks, and workflows. Seven Trade-off Categories: Identifies recurring challenges, such as balancing individual versus group workflows, integrating systems, managing new processes, and addressing ergonomic, workflow, and policy issues. Proactive Planning: Encourages addressing potential challenges during the design and implementation phases, rather than reacting to problems post-launch.
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The Health Everywhere Hub portfolio map showcases academic-led projects tackling real healthcare challenges across Alberta. By highlighting shared goals and commonalities, we hope to spark collaboration and amplify impact across the system.
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