Integrating the IT Infrastructures in Healthcare Organisations: a Proposition of Influential Factors

The healthcare industry is composed of primary and secondary healthcare providers. Each provider needs to exchange information with other providers. Information Systems (IS) developed on different types of hardware and software platforms serve this need. Due to the heterogeneous and distributed nature of information and communicating technology (ICT) in the healthcare industry, sharing of the data has become an issue. There is an urgent need for the integration of these distributed IS. Several efforts have been made to achieve the integration, but traditional methods can only in part address integration problems. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) offers another solution to addressing the needs of healthcare information systems integration. From a technical perspective, EAI overcomes integration problems at all levels (e.g. data, process etc.) by providing a flexible and manageable Information Technology (IT) infrastructure. From a business perspective, EAI reduces the overall integration costs by minimising integration time and maintenance cost. A literature review in the area of EAI indicates that EAI adoption has not been studied in depth in relation to healthcare organisations. However, there is a clear need for healthcare organisations to seek EAI adoption. In doing so, a conceptual framework for EAI adoption in healthcare organisations is proposed. Decision makers in healthcare organisations, can use this model when considering EAI adoption.