Opening the black box: measuring hospital information technology capability

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Information Systems Research
• Organizational Management

Background:

• Increasing investment in health care information technology (IT) has not been matched by robust empirical measures of IT capability.
• The traditional 'black box' view of IT hinders the measurement of its organizational impact and realization of positive outcomes.
• A need exists for a theoretically grounded, measurable construct to define IT capability in healthcare organizations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a theoretically specified organizational measure of information technology (IT) capability from a stakeholder perspective.
• To introduce and test the construct of 'IT munificence' as a measure of hospital IT capability.

Main Methods:

• A stakeholder perspective was employed to develop a latent construct for IT capability.
• Theories of diffusion of innovation and strategic contingency informed the development of the IT munificence construct.
• The proposed construct was empirically tested using data from 1,545 acute care hospitals in the United States.

Main Results:

• The proposed measure, IT munificence, demonstrated a good fit with the study data.
• The findings support the hypothesis that IT munificence effectively represents a strategy for assessing hospital IT capability.
• This provides a measurable approach to understanding the organizational impact of IT investments.

Conclusions:

• IT munificence offers a theoretically sound and empirically validated measure of IT capability in healthcare.
• This construct moves beyond the 'black box' perception, enabling better assessment of IT's strategic value.
• The measure can guide healthcare organizations in evaluating and optimizing their IT capabilities and investments.