METAPARADIGM - A SOFT AND SITUATION ORIENTED MIS DESIGN APPROACH

Every-day routine work performed by medical staff can be enormous, thu s continuing education, diagnostic assistance, medical research or lit erature searches remains only an aspiration for them. The appearance o f the computer-based information technology has initiated the possibil ity to significantly ease these routine activities and enable the medi cal staff to devote more time to enhanced creative work. However, only when medical staff can use computers reliably, effectively, democrati cally, easily, and in natural, intuitive fashion, medical information system (MIS) will. be used enthusiastically and favourably. In that ma nner special attention must be dedicated to MIS design. The aim of our paper is to introduce the new (M)IS design approach called metaparadi gm and show its applicability to MIS design. A metaparadigm is a holis tic, participative and systemic approach, incorporating design activit ies needed to construct both the (M)IS design paradigm and the selecte d (M)IS. It is our deepest belief that metaparadigms employment can en hance many IS design weaknesses and result in the successful medical i nformation systems design and use.