A New Socio-technical Model for Studying Health Information Technology in Complex Adaptive Healthcare Systems

This is a review for Sittig and Singh's 2010 article "A New Socio-technical Model for Studying Health Information Technology in Complex Adaptive Healthcare Systems."

Moving Towards a New Socio-technical Model for HIT

The 8 Dimensional Socio-technical Model Includes:

• Hardware and Software Computing Infrastructure: equipment and software used to power, support, and operate clinical applications and devices

• Clinical Content: textual or numeric data and images that constitute the "language" of clinical applications

• Human Computer Interface: all aspects of the computer that users can see, touch, or hear as they interact with it

• People: everyone who interacts in some way with the system, from the developers to end-users, including potential patient-users

• Workflow and Communication: processes or steps involved in assuring that patient care tasks are carried out effectively

• Internal Organizational Policies, Procedures, and Culture: an organization's internal structures, policies, and procedures affect every other dimension in the model.

• External Rules, Regulations, and Pressures: accounts for the external forces that facilitate or place constraints on the design, development, implementation, use, and evaluation of HIT in the clinical setting.

• System Measurement and Monitoring: the effects of HIT must be measured and monitored on a regular basis.