I. INTRODUCTION
I
NFORMATION technology has expanded to encompass nearly every industry in the world from finance and
Fig. 1. Health care supply chain.
placement for the physician–patient relationship; instead it is meant to enhance this relationship, by making both physicians and patients better informed.
Current literature on the deployment of information systems in the health care sector shows that most organizations are allocating a relatively small amount of resources toward information systems. In fact, one study showed that the health care industry was generally spending only about 2% of its revenues on technology, while other industries generally average around 10% [1]. This study was echoed by another article [2] showing that the health care sector still lagged behind the financial industry, the telecommunication industry, and the airline industry in terms of the implementation of information technology.
Spinning off of the lack of resource allocation is the finding that the health care industry is lagging behind in terms of e-commerce applications. One study of American health care providers showed that while 92% of health care professionals surveyed had informational Web sites, only 20% were participating in extranets or supply chain networks, and only 15% were currently offering enterprise portals [3]. The general reluctance of the health care industry to adopt IT change, is also highlighted in a study of health care in the United Kingdom [4]. This study shows that while general practitioners were using computers as a part of their daily routine, only 19% of general practitioners in the U.K. were currently linked to NHSnet, a government sponsored network that can be used to link all of the country’s general practitioners into central databases via voice, data, and mobile communication media [4]. Although the current use of information systems in the health care industry is minimal, there has been a push to allow information systems to play a more intricate role in health care. This is evidenced by research showing that the percentage of resources allocated
banking to universities and nonprofit organizations. The health care industry, which is composed of hospitals, individual physician practices, specialty practices, as well as managed care providers, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies, is no exception. The industry’s expanded interest in information systems implementation has primarily been fueled by needs for cost efficiency, increased competition, as well as a fundamental change in the health care industry, in which providers have changed their focus from reactive care and treatment to preventive medicine and disease management.
This paper provides a model for health care organizations to utilize the different information system technologies that can be employed to streamline business processes, reduce administrative costs, make organizations more competitive, and ultimately provide better care to patients. Specifically, this study focuses on using the Internet as the backbone to connect suppliers, enterprise systems, physicians, and patients to one value added supply chain.
Fig. 1 depicts that health care organizations can use the Internet to link not only their own operations, but also the operationsof suppliers andphysicians, and needsof patients.ThediagramshowsthattheInternetfacilitatestwo-waycommunication between all entities in the supply chain. In addition to general communication and data exchange through the Internet, suppliers, including insurance providers and pharmaceutical companies, can access part of a health care organization’s enterprise systems viasecure extranets.The model also shows thatinternal company data can be accessed by physicians and specialists via intranets. Notice also that the Internet is not shown to be a re-
The author is with the Department of Management, College of Business Administration, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0491 USA (e-mail: ksiau@unl.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TITB.2002.805449
II. C URRENT USE OF IT IN HEALTHCARE
1089-7771/03$17.00 ฉ 2003 IEEE