Electronic prescriptions as a part of national ICT‐infrastructure for the healthcare industry

In the individual organization level, it is quite usual to distribute information technology into the basic infrastructure and to the applications resting on it. This kind of thinking is not so well developed in the national level, even though we there too clearly identify several kinds of infrastructures, such as those connected with traffic, waste management, education, power and energy supply, health care, and the judiciary, just to name a few. Common for all infrastructures in both cases are that they often do not support themselves financially, and that thus straightforward business thinking does not develop them keen enough. Similarly governance structures tailored for running business do not suit them. As the national infrastructure components too take time to mature, they are often owned and mainly supported by the government. However, the role of governments is changing, and as infrastructures grow more complicated, their development and maintenance usually needs the support of many stakeholders. In our article we discuss which are national ICT infrastructures, and especially which are those in the health care industry. We discuss how their governance structures, development, application and maintenance should differ from those of individual ICT applications. One particular aspect of study is how much should the health care industry infrastructure rely on other national ICT infrastructure components. As a concrete example we take up the case of the Finnish national electronic prescription implementation project. Our discussion focuses on how this important application could be implemented better taking into account its nature a national ICT infrastructure in the health care field.