Week2 - Software for IM

Many articles can be found on the Internet about failure in Information system, among which a case study interests me most. I am really into health informatics, and it's my initial incentive for pursuing graduate study in MIS field. So I chose a case study in the failure of healthcare information system to read and analyze. This study introduces UK National Health Service Connecting for Health CSC Data Centre Incident in July 2006 and the United States ‘Veterans’ Affairs VistA Server Failure in August 2007. The author concludes several lessons learned from these failures, and I generalize the causes to issues that caused loses in IT investment as following:

1.       Software suppliers’ communications problems with system procurement staff, which results in unreasonable estimate of cost and schedule of construction.

2.       In the analysis stage, poor definition, vague objectives, inadequate planning, lack of standards, and absence of risk identification may cause failure

3.       In the design procedure, data conventions of different parts, very technology proposed as a solution, and inability to meet performance criteria may cause failure.

4.       Organizational complexity and IT complexity accumulate during the implementation.

5.       Putting a system into production without adequate testing

6.       Change the system to support critical new requirements discovered during final development.

…….

Only if all these causes are successfully prevented, can the IM software be implemented successfully. If there is something wrong in early stage, it will inevitably cause unexpected consequences in later process.

Business requires multiple IT networks, systems, applications, services across the entire enterprise to share information between lines of business and improve business agility and performance. Thus, enterprise architecture, which can help integrate and manage IT resources from a strategy and business-driven viewpoint, should be applied in the initial level of an information system.

If the healthcare systems in the case study have implemented an EA, they could benefit from lowering the overlap in processes in each system, understanding current company functions and processes, identifying changes to pre-existing goals and organizational units, and so on. Thus, the possibility of failure should be largely reduced.

Here are some videos about health information technology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW3Wpfou7LQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By4f5uepTpQ
we can see some kind of future in this field.