Internet review

Citation

Crowston, K. (2002), "Internet review", Information Technology & People, Vol. 15 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/itp.2002.16115cag.001

Internet review

In this column, I will discuss Web resources related to two of the papers in this issue that look at ways of envisioning the use of information and communications technology (ICT). Rose discusses an action research project to develop a new information systems development concept. Action research has been discussed before in this column (in Vol. 12 No. 4 and in Vol. 14 No. 1, a special issue on action research), and I refer interested readers to those columns.

Rose's work builds on Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). Checkland has a page on the Lancaster University's Department of Management Science site (http://www.lums2.lancs.ac.uk/MANSCI/Staff/CHECK.HTM) and SSM is described as one of the department's research areas (http://www.lums2.lancs.ac.uk/MANSCI/PhD/ResearchAreas.htm#Soft%20Systems%20Methodology).

Christopher Brown-Syed presents a history of SSM in Chapter 3 of his PhD thesis (http://valinor.ca/ssm3.html), noting:

… connections among SSM, the general systems theory of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, and the "appreciative systems" envisioned by Sir Geoffrey Vickers.

Other introductions to SSM can be found in on-line class notes, such as the presentations of:

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  Chris Jarvis, Brunel University (http://sol.brunel.ac.uk/~jarvis/bola/research/ssm.html part of the "Business on-line learning archive project");

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  John Buchanan, University of Waikato (http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/depts/mnss/courses/emba/ssm/);

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  J.E. Beasley, Imperial College, London (http://mscmga.ms.ic.ac.uk/jeb/or/softor.html); and

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  Jim Underwood, University of Technology, Sydney (http://linus.socs.uts.edu.au/~jim/bpt/ssm.html).

Several sites offer guides to SSM resources, such as papers and pointers to sites of interest. These hotlists include:

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  The "Home page for softs [sic] systems methodology", maintained by Oni B. Bintoro, a postgraduate student at Massey University (http://members.tripod.com/SSM_Delphi/ssm4.html); and

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  The "SSM Internet resource page", by Andrew Finegan, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (http://www.bf.rmit.edu.au:81/~andrewf/ssm-res.html).

(While the resources listed above are not an exhaustive sample, it is interesting to note that they are all from Commonwealth countries.)

Rose also cites the work of Hirschheim on systems development approaches. Hirschheim's paper with Iivari and Klein, "A comparison of five alternative approaches to information systems development" (http://www.cba.uh.edu/~parks/fis/sad5.htm, Australian Journal of Information Systems, Vol. 5 No. 1, September, 1997) includes a discussion of SSM.

Rose's project was situated in the development of a University intranet, apparently inspired by an examination of MIT's Websites. As many readers will already know, MIT recently announced their plans to:

… make MIT course materials that are used in the teaching of almost all undergraduate and graduate subjects available on the Web, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world.

This content-development project is called MIT Open Courseware (http://web.mit.edu/ocw/ ). As of this writing, 20 courses have been piloted, but not yet publicly released.

Somewhat confusingly, MIT is also cooperating in a systems development project called the Open Knowledge Initiative (http://web.mit.edu/oki/), which (despite the name) intends to define an "architectural specification to be used for the development of educational related software", as well as a few exemplary applications. The site also includes pointers to related development projects at MIT. The development approach adopted by this project poses an interesting comparison to the approach presented by Rose.

I turn now to the second paper, by Jensen and Winthereik, which concerns the production of visions for ICT in Danish health care. The authors discuss two health care projects, the Electronic Patient Record Project and the Digital Doctor Project. The Electronic Patient Record Project is related to a larger European project on electronic health care records. There is a brief summary of this project available on the Website of the European Health Telematics Observatory (http://www.ehto.org/ht_projects/html/dynamic/31.html).

Both Hvidovre Hospitals (http://hvidovre.hosp.dk/ in Danish) and the Danish Ministry of the Interior and Health (http://www.sum.dk/uk/ukmenu.htm) have Websites, as does the Danish Institute for Health Services Research (DSI, http://www.dsi.dk/engelsk.html). DSI is an independent not-for-profit research institute that provides research, communication and consultancy services for and with the health sector. There is a brief overview of DSI's work in Health Informatics on their site (http://www.dsi.dk/frz_publications.htm).

Finally, the Danish National Board of Health (http://www.sst.dk/english/index.asp) provides information on Danish Health Informatics (http://www.sst.dk/faglige_omr/informatik/) and the Electronic Patient Record Project in particular (http://www.sst.dk/faglige_omr/informatik/epj/elektropat.asp). These documents are only available in Danish, but InterTrans from Translation Experts (http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTran?) does provide Danish translations.

The Digital Doctor Project was a project of the Danish Board of Technology (http://www.tekno.dk/index.php3?language=uk). The Danish Board of Technology provides a very interesting example of envisioning technology. The role of the board is to disseminate knowledge about technology, its possibilities and its effects on people, on society and on the environment. The board promotes ongoing discussion about technology, evaluates technology and advises the Danish Parliament (the Folketing) and other governmental bodies in matters pertaining to technology. Unfortunately, there are no details about the Digital Doctor Project on the site. However, there is information about other projects undertaken (12 topics are considered each year) and about the various methods used by the board (e.g. scenario workshop, hearings for parliament, voting conference, consensus conference, etc.).

Of course, there is a lot of other information concerning health informatics. A sampling of organizations on the Web include the British Medical Informatics Society (http://www.bmis.org/), the Centre for Health Informatics at University of NSW, Australia (http://www.chi.unsw.edu.au/), the Center for Medical Informatics at Yale University's School of Medicine (http://ycmi.med.yale.edu/) and the American Medical Informatics Association (http://www.amia.org/). Health Informatics Europe (HIE) is a Web-based journal (http://www.hi-europe.info/new.htm).

As usual, you can avoid having to retype the URLs in this article by starting from the recently overhauled on-line version at http://crowston.syr.edu/itp/

Kevin Crowston