The Maturity of Maturity Models in Health Care and Informatics

Maturity models can be used to assess organizational capability in specific areas. Over the past decade, maturity model use has increased along with the development of maturity models for many specific areas related to health care informatics. A challenge in the use and development of maturity models is understanding what makes a model functional, which can be considered the "maturity" of the model. We developed a meta-maturity model for assessing models, and evaluated it by applying it to models that have been developed and used in areas related to health care and informatics. The distribution of models across this meta-maturity model shows that there is wide variation of model effectiveness. The application of this meta-maturity model can help individuals and organizations choose the most appropriate models, and can also assist those who are developing models to consider how models can be improved.