The application of a sociotechnical analysis for the personally controlled electronic health record.

Abstract

Healthcare systems around the globe are facing a number of challenges. Increasing focus is thus being placed on constructing appropriate healthcare reforms which are attempting to address how to tackle these challenges. A critical enabler in these reforms is the adoption of an e-health solution. Such e-health solutions are not only expensive and complex endeavors, but also have far reaching implications. Given that the implementation and adoption of these e-health solutions is so important; it is also vital to have an extensive evaluation and analysis of these systems with a theoretically informed lens. This then will serve to maximize and sustain the benefits of the proposed solution and realise its full potential for achieving superior healthcare delivery. To date the literature is voids of such evaluations. Hence, this paper proffers the use of a sociotechnical systems (STS) analysis. The exemplar case study under consideration is that of the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR), the chosen e-health solution by the Australian government.