Coordination considerations of healthcare information technology

While health information technology (HIT) may be designed to support specific tasks the integrated nature of healthcare delivery often requires HIT to play various coordination roles. While studies have shown that coordination issues with HIT can cause adverse impacts there is little research that has looked at the specific types of coordination that HIT need to support. This paper uses a longitudinal study of a perioperative information system to identify and discuss different categories of HIT coordination. The findings can help the design and evaluation of HIT to support the coordination needs of healthcare delivery.