Toward an informatics research agenda: Key people and organizational issues

As we have advanced in medical informatics and created many impressive inno vations, we also have learned that technologic developments are not suffici ent to bring the value of computer and information technologies to health c are systems. This paper proposes a model for improving how we develop and d eploy information technology. The authors focus on trends in people, organi zational, and social issues (POI/OSI), which are becoming more complex as b oth health care institutions and information technologies are changing rapi dly. They outline key issues and suggest high-priority research areas. One dimension of the model concerns different organizational levels at which in formatics applications are used. The other dimension draws on social scienc e disciplines for their approaches to studying implications of POI/OSI in i nformatics. By drawing on a wide variety of research approaches and asking questions based in social science disciplines, the authors propose a resear ch agenda for high-priority issues, so that the challenges they see ahead f or informatics may be met better.