A socio-technical approach for mobile health informatics together with organisational change: case studies in community healthcare service centres in China

This thesis addresses the theory of Socio-Technical Systems (STS) within the context of Information Systems (IS), a complicated field combining Information Technology and social shaping impacts. IS have been changing our society for some decades. From Office Automation (OA) to E-Commerce and E-government, IS are creating a new era of Mobilisation. Different industries have all been adopting Information Technology to enhance their business, from enterprises to public sectors. All these changes bring dramatic impacts for organisational behaviour and people's living, which need to be studied. According to academic literature, health informatics, being one of the important and complex fields in IS, started to employ mobile technical systems to improve healthcare service delivery for citizens at the start of the new Millennium. Comparing with other theoretical models in IS, the author argues that the Socio-Technical approach can explain comprehensively the new changes to organisations and society. Following the theories of STS, these case studies were decided by the researchers as field work in Chinese Community Healthcare Service Centres, where there are various mobile services for the citizens. Through multiple case studies, the author found that Leader Emphasis is one new social element in the field of the IS, while Participation, as another social element is essential to the context of this research project. These two social shaping elements, combining together within a model of STS, provide new decision making process, which is vital to a successful development of Mobile Health Information Systems (MHIS). The model has affected organisational behaviour, organisational structure, culture and society, following the usage of Mobile IS. Based on the result of the field work and the relevant literature of E-govemment, this research also concludes that M-govemment can be the transformation of E-govemment, as public service can be delivered efficiently by Mobile IS. A developing model is presented in this thesis.