Undertaking sociotechnical evaluations of health information technologies

What is it about?

Healthcare workers argue now that any assessment of health information technology (HIT) needs to account for its technical uses and its social uses. International observers of healthcare are also interested in this ‘sociotechnical’ perspective, a view that assumes both organisational and human (socio) factors and information technology systems (technical) factors will influence the success of HIT systems. Sociotechnical evaluations of HIT, therefore, attempt to study the processes associated with using a new technology in its social and organisational setting. This approach to HIT evaluations could lead to learning lessons relevant for assessing information technology systems in other industries too. Sociotechnical evaluations that use multiple methods are becoming more popular and are likely to offer a new research approach for some scholars. There have been clear benefits of sociotechnical analyses of the efficiency of HIT. However, there are issues with this approach - mainly that a sociotechnical analysis offers subjective qualifications rather than objective answers. There are, therefore, opportunities for scholars to decide on the role and scope of the sociotechnical investigation and analysis of HIT, and to understand if it demands further research in its own right. The authors hope that there will be more sociotechnical evaluations of HIT systems in the future. Given the interests of financial and policy groups in developing HIT to improve health outcomes (and reduce healthcare costs), the authors argue that greater use of sociotechnical evaluations will help to illustrate the big idea of the relationships between technology, healthcare organisations and patients. They believe such understanding will improve patient wellbeing, reduce healthcare costs, and offer lessons for other industries.

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