Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management: A Case Study of a Healthcare Organization

Fragmented technological and organizational environment has compromised flexibility and efficiency of Finnish healthcare system. Managers have promoted process orientation as a solution for organizational problems while technologists have been praising service orientation for technological issues. As a result process perspective and service orientation are included in national development efforts aiming to change the Finnish healthcare system. This paper argues that broader issues of enterprise architecture planning and enterprise application integration form the theoretical landscape for which process management and service orientation are part of. Service orientation merges best practicies in a theoretically and technologically coherent framework to support flexible information systems. However the technological change is not enough but one has to change also the way technology is managed and developed. Finally theoretical analyses are reflected against personal experiences in healthcare sector to construct a snapshot of a current situation of process management and service orientation in healthcare organization.