Using Stakeholder Analysis to Identify Users in Healthcare Information Systems Research: Who is the Real User?

Applying IS research to the healthcare context is an important endeavor. However, IS researchers must be cautious about identifying individual roles, the context of the setting, and postulating generalizability. Much of IS theory is rooted in organizations, their business processes, and stakeholders. It is not a simple matter to generalize healthcare IS research, assuming that it is equivalent to organizational IS research. Hospitals, emergency rooms, and laboratories are different from the “business environment”, and “healthcare users” vary considerably in their roles. Therefore, IS researchers need to understand the healthcare setting before they can appropriately apply IS theory. Obviously, if we are studying the wrong person, or group of people, we cannot expect to get relevant results. In order to alleviate confusion regarding “who is the user?” in healthcare IS research, we provide examples of healthcare scenarios, perform simplified stakeholder analysis for each scenario, and identify the stakeholders. [Article copies are available for purchase from InfoSci-on-Demand.com]