Seite - 87 - in Applied Interdisciplinary Theory in Health Informatics - Knowledge Base for Practitioners

Using Actor-Network Theory to Study Health Information Technology Interventions Kathrin CRESSWELL a,1 a Usher Institute of Population Health Sciences and Informatics, The University of Edinburgh, UK Abstract. This chapter introduces Actor-Network Theory, a sociotechnical approach to studying health information technology implementation. The chapter is intended as a pragmatic introduction to the field, acknowledging that there are many contested features of an Actor-Network Theory informed methodology. Nevertheless, the approach can be usefully drawn on to help to focus data collection and sampling. A case study describing the application of Actor-Network Theory to study the “failed” implementation of national electronic health records in England as part of a national “top-down” implementation program illustrates the main tenets of the approach and provides concrete examples of how Actor-Network Theory may be applied. In doing so, this chapter offers a reflexive account of how Actor- Network Theory has provided a nuanced analysis of how the implementation of national electronic health records affected different stakeholders, organizations and technology. Keywords. Sociotechnical, Actor-Network Theory, Health Information Technology Learning objectives After reading this chapter the reader will be able to: 1. Describe the basics of Actor-Network Theory 2. Pragmatically apply Actor-Network Theory-based approaches to health informatics evaluations 3. Critically evaluate the various assumptions comprised within the Actor-Network Theory-based approach and draw on these for applied use in healthcare settings 1. Introduction to sociotechnical perspectives and Actor-Network Theory 1.1. Sociotechnical approaches to studying technology implementation The concept of sociotechnical systems 2 emerged from the study of organizational behavior and workplace safety in 1950s studies of English coalmine workers. The central assumption of sociotechnical approaches is that social and technical dimensions are intimately intertwined and need to be considered together when exploring 1 Corresponding Author, Kathrin Cresswell, E-mail: Kathrin.Cresswell@ed.ac.uk 2 See also Chapter 7, “Distributed Cognition: understanding complex sociotechnical informatics”. Applied Interdisciplinary Theory in Health Informatics P. Scott et al. (Eds.) © 2019 The authors and IOS Press. This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0). doi:10.3233/SHTI190114 87