Barriers to adoption of information technology in healthcare

Healthcare is an important pillar of society, critical for e ectively responding to public health emergencies, and addressing disease, ill health, and poverty brought on by communicable disease and non communicable disease and cancer [7]. The increasing need for cost e ective, time e ective, and preventive healthcare is forcing radical changes in current healthcare systems, requiring them to take full advantage of capabilities of modern technology, including information technology. However, this is not straightforward. Despite constant advances in modern information technology, adoption in healthcare is very slow. In this report, we take a systems thinking perspective to identify barriers to the application of information technology in healthcare and adoption of those advances through the prism of two use cases: electronic medical records (EMR) and remote patient monitoring (RPM) technology. Finally, we outline solutions to individual barriers and consider the negative e ects those solutions might have on other barriers. We expect that our analysis of adoption of information technology in healthcare as presented in our use cases will strengthen the case for systems thinking and help requirements analysts decide on appropriate steps to boost adoption of new technology to achieve more e ective and e cient next generation healthcare.