Sustainable Health Informatics: Health Informaticians As Alchemists
Context Sensitive Health Informatics: Sustainability in Dynamic Ecosystems 3 R. Marcilly 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/SHTI190129 Sustainable Health Informatics: Health Informaticians as Alchemists a, 1 b c Christian NØHR , Craig E. KUZIEMSKY , Peter L. ELKIN , Romaric MARCILLY d and Sylvia PELAYO d a Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, University of Southern Denmark b Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada c Department of Biomedical Informatics, Jacobs School of Medicine, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York d Univ. Lille, INSERM, CHU Lille, CIC-IT/Evalab 1403 - Centre d'Investigation clinique, EA 2694, F-59000 Lille, France Abstract. The digital transformation of health care delivery remains an elusive work in progress. Contextual variation continues to be a significant barrier to the development of sustainable health information systems. In this paper we characterize health informaticians as modern alchemists and use this characterization to describe informatics progress in addressing four key healthcare challenges. We highlight the need for informaticians to be diligent and loyal to basic methodological principles while also appreciating the role that contextual variation plays in informatics research. We also emphasize that meaningful health systems transformation takes time. The insight presented in this paper helps informaticians in our quest to develop sustainable health information systems. Keywords. Sustainability, Health informatics, Decision support, Ontologies, standards, Work practice, Usability, Context 1.
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