An Analysis of the Evolving Intellectual Structure of Health Information Systems Research in the Information Systems Discipline

The rapid evolution of health information systems (Health IS) research has led to many significantcontributions. However, while the Health IS subset of information systems (IS) scholarship hasconsiderably grown over the past two decades, this growth hasled to questions regarding the currentintellectual structure of this area of inquiry. In an effort to more fully understand how Health ISresearchhas contributed to the IS discipline, and what this may mean for future Health IS researchin the IS domain, we conduct an in-depth evaluation of Health IS research published in mainstreamIS journals. We apply citation analysis, latent semantic analysis (LSA), and social network analysis(SNA) to ourdata setof Health IS articles in order to: (1) identify Health IS research themes andthematic shifts, (2)determine which Health IS research themes are cohesive (versus disparate), (3)identify which Health IS research themes are central (versus peripheral), (4) clarify networks ofresearchers (i.e., thought leaders) contributing to these research themes, and(5) provide insights intothe connection of Health ISresearchto its reference disciplines. Overall, we contribute a systematicdescription and explanation of the intellectual structure ofHealth ISresearchand highlight how theexisting intellectual structure of Health ISresearchprovides opportunities for future research