Augmenting Successful UK Healthcare IS Adoption and Diffusion: An Analysis of Inherent and Emergent Organizational Structures

The evidence suggests that information systems (IS) continue to be designed, adopted and diffused within public sector organisations to support the ‘reform’ agendas of national governments with a particular emphasis upon improving the accessibility and transparency of services. It is argued that Actor-Network Theory (ANT) provides useful theoretical insights into how stakeholders are able to organise in this respect. This is to highlight structures where non-human actors adopt a mechanism to examine advanced technologies (inherent structures), and structures that actually emerge as human actions engage with the context, ie healthcare IS adoption and diffusion processes. The research in this paper is based on a qualitative approach analyzing data collected from more than hundred respondents in the UK National Health Service (NHS). An attempt is made to illustrate that technology is just one of a number of heterogeneous socio-technical elements that must be managed within a successful information systems project. The paper concludes by offering ideas and directions for future research in the health sector using ANT analysis