Mapping the sociotechnical healthcare ecosystem: expanding the horizons of sociotechnical inquiry

Abstract

In recent years, sociotechnical approaches have become increasingly popular for understanding the design, implementation and evaluation of information technology in health informatics. On the whole, these approaches have sought to unite essential knowledge from the domains of the social sciences and information technology in the study of health informatics, with the central assertion that health information technology cannot be properly understood apart from its social and systemic contexts. This perspective has been enormously beneficial, as it has provided a solid and sophisticated theoretical basis from which health informatics researchers have begun to describe, study, and understand human-IT interactions and their consequences at a microsystemic level. As this theory continues to be applied, however, it has become increasingly clear that these human-IT microsystems are themselves imbedded within larger systemic contexts, and that both these contexts--as well as the interactions and change processes both between and among them--need to be clearly conceptualized and explored in greater detail. In this workshop, sponsored by the AMIA Working Group on People and Organizational Issues, we present human ecological theory as means for facilitating this theoretical growth and invite health informaticians from all disciplines to actively explore the emerging Sociotechnical Healthcare Ecosystem.