The dimension of the paradigm of complexity in health systems

AbstractThis article presents elements to better understand health systems from the complexity approach, a position that moves away from the linearity, rigidity, and directional. It is characterised by the study of the emergence of unexpected behaviours, oriented to explain and understand more completely what happens in health systems. The current systems are becoming overwhelmed.The complexity paradigm represents a conceptualisation different to the prevalent epistemology, non-isolated, non-reductionist, or fixed. It does not solve the problems, but presents other bases to fully understand the physical, biological and social systems. It is a perspective that has its basis in the systems theory, informatics and cybernetics beyond traditional knowledge, the positive logics, Newtonian physics and symmetric mathematics, in which everything is centred and balanced. It is the link between the “soft” and “hard sciences, and takes into account the determining factors of social health and organisation culture.Under the complexity paradigm the health systems are identified with the following concepts: entropy, negentropy, the second law of thermodynamics, attractors, chaos theory, fractals, self-management and self-organization, emerging behaviours, percolation, uncertainty, networks, and robustness. These expressions open new possibilities to improve the management and better understanding of the health systems, giving rise to consider health systems as complex adaptive systems