Summary
Objectives:
The aim is to gain information on factors influencing success and failure for Health
Informatics applications from a group of medical informaticians.
Methods:
Based on the presentations at a special topic conference on success and failure in
Health ICT and analysis of the proceedings, we conducted a Delphi study on success
and failure aspects.
Results:
A total of 110 success factors and 27 failure criteria were identified, distributed
on categories like functional, organizational, behavioral, technical, managerial,
political, cultural, legal, strategy, economy, education and user acceptance. These
factors and criteria were rated for six different system types. Unanimously it was
agreed that “collaboration and co-operation” and “setting goals and courses” are “essential
for the success” of clinical systems, and “user acceptance” for educational systems.
Similarly, the score “essential in order to avoid a failure” were given unanimously
on clinical systems for “response rate and other performance measures” and on administrative
systems for “not understanding the organizational context” with “not understanding
or foreseeing the extent to which the new IT-system affects the organization, its
structure and/or work procedures” as the highest scoring sub-item.
Conclusions:
All success factors and failure criteria were considered relevant by the Delphi expert
panel. There is no small set of relevant factors or indicators, but success or failure
of a Health ICT depends on a large set of issues. Further, clinical systems and decision
support systems depend on more factors than other systems.
Keywords
Success - failure - systems development - Delphi
