Electronic Data Flows in Health Care -Some Obstacles in the Implementation of EDI Systems

摘要

Modern information and communication technology is used too little in health care organizations. This is true at least in Finland, which in many other aspects enjoys the status of a symbol for an advanced information society. Our study searches reasons for this state of affairs through an industry survey. Our hypothesis is that the lack of informal network building tradition has been a hindrance for the development of electronic data interchange in the Finnish health care. To build a basis for this, we discuss the importance of informal networks in industries. As expected, lack of working informal networks in the industry turns out to be one of the reasons - but just one - for the modest application of modern information technology. In general, we come to the conclusion that the health care industry is still far away from other "normal" industries, and misses many typical characteristics of an advanced industry branch.