I NFORMATION SYSTEMS AND H EALTH I NFORMATION S YSTEMS

Sommerville defines a information system as “a purposeful collection of interre-lated components that work together to achieve some objective”, which involves people, technology and the system environment (2001, p 21). An information system is developed and maintained to support, manage and define processes of collection, aggregation, use and flow of information. Similar to Sommerville, Heeks also defines information systems as

“…systems of human and technical components that accept, store, output and transmit information. They may be based on any com-bination of human endeavours, paper-based and IT”

(Heeks 1998, p 5)

Braa and Nermunkh (1997) argue that as the actions and dynamics within an IS most often are primarily based on technology and use of computers, and introducing ISs in developing countries is more complex as compared to that in developed countries. Hence, the focus when approaching an IS should be on the people within the context and processes of technological learning, and not primarily on the technological elements of the IS (Braa and Hedberg 2000).

In order to better address this complexity, researchers have argued for alterna-tive conceptualizations of IS. Instead of emphasizing primarily as technological artifacts, IS may be seen as social systems or information infrastructures. For example, Walsham (2001) argues that large ISs should be understood as social systems made up of a web of social and technical elements. ISs are a part of the social context that needs to be understood with respect to relationships and dynamics within the organization, and the infrastructure supporting them, in Walsham’s words:

“The technical and the social must be considered together, and in specific contexts, in order to investigate the role of technology in work and organizations”

(Walsham 2001, p 44)

Another approach to the study of ISs as social systems comes from the concep-tualization of IS as web models. Kling and Scacchi (1982) introduce the con-cept of web models for understanding the connection of large ISs and its social and political context. Several authors have defined ISs as web models, which are used to provide theoretical frameworks to understand and analyze the social context through a web of associations around the IS (Braa and Nermunkh 1997). ISs are regarded as complex social objects as embedded in a social con-text. This view, it is argued, is in contrast to the traditional discrete-entity per-spective on organisations and ISs, which focus on primarily technological fea-tures.

Actor Network Theory (ANT) builds upon the socio-technical conceptualiza-tions of IS, and has been used by many IS researchers to study ISs at a micro-level. ANT is born from the original work at Ecole des Mines by Callon (1986) and Latour (1987) which had its roots in the domain of sociology of science, and subsequently included a stronger focus on technology, and information technology (Latour 1996). The principle idea of ANT is a fairly simple one: It seeks to examine a network of actors (human and non-human) and how these actors are linked together, thus creating a heterogeneous network of aligned

interests. For example, when driving a car, you are influenced by traffic regula-tions, previous driving experience, and the car’s manoeuvrability. All of these factors are related or connected to how you act, and so should be considered together. An actor network, then, is the act linked together with all of its influ-encing factors (which again is linked), producing a network (Ciborra et al.

2000, p 75). A major focus of ANT, when applied in particular contexts, is to

“try to trace and explain the processes whereby relatively stable networks of aligned interests are created and maintained, or alternatively to examine why such networks fail to establish themselves” (Walsham and Sahay 1999, p. 42).

Translations and inscriptions are two important concepts of ANT. Translations describe how interests are aligned in the actor-network, while inscriptions de-scribe how viewpoints and intentions of behaviour are embedded in the actor-network.

A wide range of IS researchers have used ANT to carry out interpretive studies on the role of information technology. Monteiro and Hanseth (1995) use ANT in two contrasting cases to describe how translation and inscriptions take place in creating EDI (Electronics Data Interchange) systems within the Nor-wegian health sector. The two examples described are the exchange of drug pre-scriptions and laboratory orders and results. They particularly study the “social constructions of standards” and how these standards are embedded into the

“information infrastructure”, and use ANT “to describe important and ne-glected aspects of information infrastructures” (p 327). In another example, Braa and Hedberg (2000) emphasize the usefulness in using ANT to analyse the process of developing a HIS in post-apartheid South Africa. They focus on Walsham et al.’s (1990) perspective on seeing ISs and social systems and thus actors and actor-networks of all kinds are considered in the process of analyzing standards and large-scale complex ISs.

A further development to the conceptualization of ISs as social systems comes from Hanseth’s discussion on information infrastructures. He describes infor-mation infrastructure as complex social webs of ISs, including humans, social and technical components, that develop and grow over a long time, layers upon and within each other (see e.g. Hanseth 1996). Hanseth (2000) sees informa-tion infrastructures as something more than pure technology, and argues for seeing infrastructures as socio-technical networks that are connected and inter-related. Infrastructures have aspects such as being enabling, shared and open;

they must support a wide range of activities and must be used by a large com-munity. The openness tells us that there should be no limit in human or tech-nical actors involved within the infrastructure. ‘Installed base’ is a term used to describe one key aspect of infrastructures. ‘New’ infrastructures are never de-veloped from scratch, they are always integrated into or replace only parts of an already existing infrastructure, referred to as the installed base (Hanseth 2000, p 60). Thus, changes to an infrastructure need to be done incrementally and

over time. Other important terms within information infrastructure terminol-ogy are ‘lock-in effects’, network externalities and gateways. Lock-in occurs when one technology is so dominant that it becomes very hard or impossible to develop competing technologies; the dominant choice becomes locked-in re-gardless of the advantages and alternatives (Hanseth 2000, p. 65-67). Using ANT terminology, lock-in effects can essentially be conceptualized as an irre-versible installed base. Callon (1991, p. 159) states that an actor-network may turn irreversible depending on 1) the extent to which it is subsequently impos-sible to go back to a point where that translation was only one among many, and 2) the extent to which it shapes and determines subsequent translations.

Network externalities tell us that, all other things being equal, it is better to be part of a larger network than a smaller one (Shapiro and Varian 1999; Hanseth 2000, p. 64). The term ‘gateway’ is used to describe a strategy to link old and new networks as a fast evolutionary approach, as opposed to backward com-patibility (Hanseth 2000, p. 69-70). The difficulty in developing and installing gateways depends on the incompatibility between the two infrastructures.

Hanseth and Monteiro (2004) stress the importance of interdependency be-tween standardization and flexibility in information infrastructures. They argue that information infrastructures are driven by standards, and how these stan-dards are resistant to change in a socio-technical network. By changing one standard to be more attractive, other standards need to change too, and to do this without creating lock-ins, standards need to be flexible enough to handle the change. The difficulty of creating flexible standards is in the nature of how standards and the installed base changes, which is illustrated as the standards reinforcing mechanism in figure 2-1. Hanseth (2000) argues that standards need to change to attract more complementary products, which again gives greater credibility of the standard. Together these make the standard more at-tractive to the user of the infrastructure. Further adoptions are then made, leading to a larger installed base. This reinforcing mechanism can lead to lock-in effects if standards are not flexible to handle the changes needed to be an effective infrastructure.

Larger installed base

More complements produced

Creater credibility of standard

Reinforces value to users Furhter adoptions

Figure 2-1: Standards reinforcements mechanism. Source: Grindley (1995)

2.2.1 Conceptualizing HIS as HII

Both these conceptualizations (ANT and information infrastructure) argue for ISs being seen as heterogeneous and complex networks. They are thus helpful and complementary in the analysis of HIS in developing countries that in par-ticular embrace political, cultural, and technical issues. Because HIS in devel-oping countries have special characteristics that distinguish it from other ISs, it makes sense to conceptualize them as a health information infrastructure (HII).

IS design methodologies aim at developing a closed system by a closed project organization for a closed customer organization within a closed time frame (Hanseth and Monteiro 2004). These limits do not fit the global view of HIS, which needs to be open, dynamic and flexible to change. The concepts of lock-in, installed base, standards, and cultivation, are particularly relevant to under-stand HIS as HII, and are now discussed.

Existing HISs in many developing countries, for example Cuba, India, and Mozambique use complex and rigid (often paper-based) methods for collecting health data. Typically when trying to change such existing systems, the in-stalled base and lock-in effects can be analyzed in relation to how existing stan-dards are subject to change or not, and how networks transform. A changeover, for example from a paper-based to computer-based information systems that requires deep organizational changes, can be analyzed using ANT and informa-tion infrastructure terminology. Skobba (2003) writes about the difficulties of changing existing legacy systems in Mozambique, especially how systems were unable to communicate with each other because of technical and organizational reasons. On the on hand, donors for various systems had withdrawn and no source code was available, thus making changes to the databases impossible.

On the other hand, various systems were on different platforms (e.g. MS DOS and Windows), making gateways between the systems difficult to establish. Be-cause of these difficulties, the systems continue to be used independently and in a fragmented way, and consequently the installed base presents a “locked-in”

state.

Hanseth (2004) argues that having open and flexible standards are a perquisite for scaling information infrastructures. This brute force argument tends to make the problem concerning in what standards are to be used by who, how should they change as needs change, and how should standards relate to each other. Monteiro (1998) uses the revision of the IP protocol to exemplify the difficulties of scaling the Internet. The problem of scaling the information in-frastructure (the Internet) lies in the “institutionalized practice of pragmatically and fairly pluralistically negotiating design issues” versus the “increasing pres-sure from new users, interest groups, commercial actors and industrial consor-tia” (p. 243). Creating a transition of standards from the one installed base to the next that can address these socio-technical issues is the main challenge in scaling the Internet.

When developing HISs, a number of systems development related problems arises. For example, formulating explicit requirements specifications at an early stage, and dealing with the changes of these specifications later, are major chal-lenges when trying to create an effective and high-quality HIS. Systems devel-opment research has proposed alternative ways of approaching the problem of the changing of “frozen” specifications by using alternative development proc-esses. Thus, the strategy on how to develop and implement a new HIS must be carefully considered. By using the framework of HII, it is possible to better analyze the basis on which such considerations are taken, and more impor-tantly why HISs work or fail. One way to apply the social systems perspective of HII in system development practice is the evolutionary approach. This ap-proach, as opposed to the waterfall approach (Sommerville 2001), is especially relevant when domain understanding of the problem is low. The process is done in a number of cyclical events, involving especially the users to improve the initial implementation in each cycle. Thus, the increased user involvement in an evolutionary setting potentially helps developers to build a better under-standing of the requirements. However, evolutionary development is better suited for small systems when complexity is low and uncertainty is high (Sommerville 2001), raising the need for additional methods to be used. Proto-typing is one method that can be seen as being complementary to the evolu-tionary approach (Budde et al. 1992). This method can be implemented in sev-eral ways, but it basically involves the creation of a prototype that is used as a basis for further development. Braa and Hedberg (2000) describe how proto-typing in South Africa was based on an improvisation strategy because of the nature of the political and administrative structure. This informal methodol-ogy, as opposed to the more rigid and formal waterfall kind of approach, re-sulted in the users having increased access to the development of the system, and with it more commitment.

Braa and Hedberg’s (2000) prototyping approach was based on the “Scandina-vian approach” of participatory system design. The Scandina“Scandina-vian approach evolved from the “Iron and metal project” as described by Nygaard (1979).

This work-oriented design approach, focus strongly on democracy and action-oriented research by involving parts on all levels within an organization (Ehn 1993). Two important aspects of participation within the Scandinavian ap-proach is, one, the skilled users, can contribute importantly to successful de-sign, and two, the political feature, which raises questions of democracy, power and control at the workplace. Lyytinen and Livari (1998) characterise the Scan-dinavian approach as a “grass root” approach because it tends to focus on small scale development of individual application systems, instead of the total IS.

Building on the evolutionary approach and participation, the notion cultivation is used to describe how IS can be scaled through local commitment and owner-ship. Braa (1997) argues that a bottom-up, participatory design process is

cru-cial in creating such local commitment and ownership. The challenge however, is thus how you spread replicable processes and to cultivate them locally. Han-seth (2004) argues that the self-reinforcing process provides a mechanism for one way of cultivation. The installed base is seen as a living organism that cul-tivates and has its own materiality, rather than some passive material to be de-signed as the designer pleases.

The concepts of installed base, lock-in, standards and cultivation are thus all important in understanding and analyzing HII in developing countries. Large scale HII cannot be analyzed and implemented using ordinary systems devel-opment principles because they do not consider HII in all its complexity aris-ing from the multiple levels, it dynamic nature, and the involvement of multi-ple user groups and needs. The conceptualization of HIS as HII is the basis for my theoretical perspective, based on concepts of installed base, lock-in, and cultivation, and as argued they help to better understand the challenges of scale and sustainability.

2.3 Implementation challenges: Issues of scale and