RESEARCH ARTICLE
Towards an Integrative Cognitive-Socio-Technical Approach in Health Informatics: Analyzing Technology-Induced Error Involving Health Information Systems to Improve Patient Safety
E.M Borycki*, A.W Kushniruk
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2010Volume: 4
First Page: 181
Last Page: 187
Publisher Id: TOMINFOJ-4-181
DOI: 10.2174/1874431101004010181
Article History:
Received Date: 8/4/2009Revision Received Date: 3/11/2009
Acceptance Date: 11/11/2009
Electronic publication date: 15/9/2010
Collection year: 2010
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to argue for an integration of cognitive and socio-technical approaches to assessing the impact of health information systems. Historically, health informatics research has examined the cognitive and socio-technical aspects of health information systems separately. In this paper we argue that evaluations of health information systems should consider aspects related to cognition as well as socio-technical aspects including impact on workflow (i.e. an integrated view). Using examples from the study of technology-induced error in healthcare, we argue for the use of simulations to evaluate the cognitive-socio-technical impacts of health information technology [36]. Implications of clinical simulations and analysis of cognitive-social-technical impacts are discussed within the context of the system development life cycle to improve health information system design, implementation and evaluation.
