organization theories. The term coordination is defined as managing dependencies between activities. The theory views an organization as complex systems that include both people and IT. The concept of coordination theory is that ITeffects on an organization result from IT’s influence on coordination processes for dependency management between activities within the organization. In hospitals, as a human organization, the major relationship
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between activities within and across the organizations is a ‘‘producer–consumer’’ relationship, which occurs when one person in a hospital uses information produced by another. This relationship can lead to several kinds of dependencies, the management of which can be affected by the use of IT. Such dependencies include prerequisite constraints, transfer, and usability. Prerequisite constraints refer to a common dependency between a ‘‘producer’’ activity and a ‘‘consumer’’ activity in which the producer activity must be completed before the consumer activity can begin. For example, X-ray results required for physicians’ diagnosis must be completed before pharmaceutical and billing processes begin. Management of prerequisite constraint usually involves sequencing and tracking processes to ensure that all tasks related to patient care are accomplished. The sequencing and tracking processes can be computerized to make information on all activities and dependencies available for everyone involved in the patient care. Transfer is a dependency that occurs when a ‘‘producer’’ produces something that is used by a ‘‘consumer’’ and this must be transferred from the producer activity to the consumer activity. Management of this transfer dependency can be physical transportation for physical objects such as labs and test results or communication when the things transferred are information, e.g., diagnosis information and medicine prescriptions. For physical transportation, IT can be used to manage the inventory and deliver them just in time when they are required by the consumer. The communication between the producer and the consumer can be improved by the use of IT, which electronically stores and transfers the information from the producer to the consumer on a realtime basis. Further, usability is a dependency, which requires that whatever is produced by a producer activity must be usable for a consumer activity. An approach to manage this dependency for information output is to develop standardization to create uniform output that is interchangeable.