Information Technology in Healthcare

The Information Technology in Healthcare (ITHC) track at HICSS enters its 28th year. Faced with a changing global landscape driven by massive increases in data analytics, increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) among system scientists, clinicians and patients, and continued health inequities globally, the track continues to serve the HICSS community by providing an opportunity for cross disciplinary collaboration among paper authors, HICSS attendees and beyond.

Since 1999, the Information Technology in Healthcare track has provided a venue for presenting and discussing interdisciplinary research focused on the role information technology can, or should, play in the delivery of healthcare. In 1999, most of the participants were business researchers with only a few from medical informatics. Today participants span many disciplines, including business, medicine, public health, and social and behavioral sciences. Topics also have evolved over the years, some lasted only several years, a few have lasted 20 years and new ones continually emerged. But the goal of the track, to investigate the use of IT to improve the delivery of healthcare has persisted.

Topics in the early years primarily focused on organizational issues, such as the planning, adoption, and management of telemedicine, electronic medical records, and data warehousing. Pressing questions included: How can IT improve the workflow in healthcare organizations? What strategies will help address resistance to use of new systems by clinical and administrative staff? How will the systems change the processes in delivering healthcare in hospitals and physician practices?

As IT evolved and systems became more widely adopted, topics in the track grew to include systems and data integration across organizations, patientfocused systems, and data mining. New questions addressed in the research included: How can data be shared when systems had different data standards? With greater access to data, how can patients be more directly involved in their healthcare? How can governments help promote greater adoption and standards?

As mobile technologies and social media rapidly evolved, a significant portion of the research in the track focused on personal health management and remote data collection. Questions addressed included: How can individuals, particularly those with chronic diseases, use IT to manage their health? How can countries with emerging economies take advantage of IT to significantly improve public health?

Across the 28 years, as the technologies changed, several issues have persisted: systems design and adoption, managing process and behavioral changes, evaluation of IT impacts, and clinical decision support. In recent years, in the face of the explosive growth of AI, more research has been focused on the potential impact of AI on the delivery of healthcare.

The success of the ITHC track is the direct result of efforts of researchers from around the world and across disciplines and the collaboration of organizations over the years, including the National Library of Medicine and the National Cancer Institute’s Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch.

This year we have thirteen minitracks presenting a wide array of research ranging from sensors and technologies for health behavior change to the use of AI in clinical practice, system science infrastructure and data analytics. Minitracks include:

• AI-Driven Healthcare: Bridging System Science and Clinical Practice
• Body Sensor Networks and AI to Advance Personalized and Population Healthcare
• Decision Support for Healthcare Processes and Services
• Digital Health Ecosystem Governance: Practices, Processes, and Policies
• Digital Innovations for Inclusive Health and Well-Being
• Health Behavior Change Support Systems
• Human-Centered Approaches to Medical Wearable Devices for Population Health
• IT Adoption, Diffusion and Evaluation
• Personalized Health Assistance with Intelligent Digital Solutions
• Self-Management of Chronic Diseases and Conditions
• Social Media and Healthcare
• Synthetic Data for AI Advancements in Healthcare
• Testing and Implementing Technology-Based Interventions to Address Mental Health and Substance Use

Each minitrack chair has drafted a brief introduction summarizing the key components of the minitrack available in this year’s Proceedings.

One of our new minitracks, AI-Driven Healthcare: Bridging System Science and Clinical Practice was the largest and most successful minitrack this year demonstrating an increasing interest in AI and its application in healthcare.

As our track continues to expand, we continue to explore ways in which to engage the HICSS community and beyond. The track continues to serve as a forum for clinicians, engineers, data scientists and social scientists from around the globe who may not usually interact to meet, discuss perspectives around innovations and form collaborations. We continue to seek new ideas and strategies to expand our reach and welcome input from readers and the HICSS community. Finally, this marks a transition year as we welcome two new track chairs, Drs. Peter Chai (Brigham and Women’s Hospital) and Stephanie Carreiro (University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School) joining Dr. Rochelle Rosen. We also extend grateful thanks to Dr. Bill Chismar, founder of the IT in Healthcare track and 40-year HICSS participant. We wish Bill well and thank him for his stewardship of the track over the past 27 years.

Peter R Chai MD MMS
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
pchai@bwh.harvard.edu

Stephanie Carreiro MD PhD
University of Massachusetts Chan
School of Medicine
stephanie.carreiro@umassmed.edu

Rochelle Rosen PhD
Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine, Brown University
Rochelle_rosen@brown.edu

William Chismar PhD
University of Hawaii at Manoa
chismar@hawaii.edu