Page - 12 - in Applied Interdisciplinary Theory in Health Informatics - Knowledge Base for Practitioners

1. Introduction to General System Theory 1.1. The origins of General System Theory Systems approaches to thinking about the world run through much of Western philosophical thought. Eastern traditions have similarly emphasized systems concepts such as holism and the balance between change and homeostasis [1]. Our modern understanding of systems can be traced to General System Theory, proposed by Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy [2] as a unifying framework for systems that is equally applicable to organisms and organizations. Branches of systems theory underpin software engineering, soft systems methods, cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Health informaticians should see systems theory as a fundamental and powerful tool in their professional role and no textbook reviewing interdisciplinary theories for health informatics would be complete without a discussion on General System Theory and the impact that modern systems approaches have had on both healthcare and informatics. The language of systems permeates all aspects of computing, information technology and the computer systems that we health informatics practitioners design, implement and study. Our computer systems are a special case of more general systems. They are different from, but also similar to many other types of systems, and of course, they are a key component in what are increasingly being called healthcare systems – that complex set of organizations and relationships that provide healthcare to large populations. A systems approach should be particularly appealing to health informaticians because systems perspectives and principles are applicable in medicine, biomedical sciences, systemic approaches to therapy, informatics systems and the organization of healthcare services [3]. New health informaticians may be surprised at the extent to which systems are found in medicine and biology and the importance of systems thinking in the understanding of the human body, its healthy maintenance and its responses to diseases and therapies. Both computers and people are complex systems. In the middle ground between computer systems and a medic’s understanding of biologic systems lies the myriad web of healthcare organizations, processes, care pathways and health delivery systems which health informatics seeks to improve. In the complex space of healthcare the words “systems” and “systems approaches” are often used rather carelessly and with little understanding or awareness of the science of systems. In this chapter, we aim to acquaint the health informatics practitioner with the theoretical base in systems that underpin both medicine and computer science and make the case for leveraging General Systems Theory as a toolset for addressing applied healthcare challenges. General System Theory (GST from here onwards) was developed by a biologist, Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972), was given support and a framework [4] by an economist, Kenneth Boulding (1910-1993) and has been subsequently refined and developed by many other scientists from a diverse range of disciplines. Bertalanffy developed his ideas for GST before and during the Second World War but did not publish them until afterwards and at a time where there was an explosion of post-war systems ideas and approaches. This interest in systems coalesced into a wider systems movement and included developing the principles and theories for the first computer-based systems. The foundational role of GST was that it provided this new systems movement with the belief that there was unifying framework underpinning their efforts. GST made the case for a single language for systems and for systems approaches as science [2]. O.Johnson /GeneralSystemTheoryand theUseofProcessMining to ImproveCarePathways12