Organizational and Information System Metaphors in the Health Care Sector - From Harmonized Value Chain to Realistic Market Models

The conceptual models actors in the implementation process of information systems carry towards the systems have a deep impact on their adoption. The metaphors that are provided for health care professionals by information system professionals and especially vendors are often too simplistic. Health care professionals do not understand the social complexity of implementing extensive information systems. This article calls in for more realistic metaphors about organizational reality and its information processing, to be used by information professionals in the health care industry. To draw in a comparison to the health care field, we think we see a similar development there. Until long in the 1980s, and still partly today, cure provision for sick people was based solely on conceptualizing him/her as a physical entity. First more recently a more comprehensive approach has won ground in the field: first now humans are understood as complex systems, whose health is not just a function of physical factors, but which too include a multitude of intertwined social and mental processes