Title: Investigating enterprise application integration benefits and barriers in healthcare organisations: an exploratory case study

Authors: Khalil Khoumbati, Marinos Themistocleous, Zahir Irani

Addresses: Information Systems Evaluation and Integration Network Group (ISEing), School of Information Systems Computing and Mathematics, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH, UK. ' Information Systems Evaluation and Integration Network Group (ISEing), School of Information Systems Computing and Mathematics, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH, UK. ' Information Systems Evaluation and Integration Network Group (ISEing), School of Information Systems Computing and Mathematics, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH, UK

Abstract: Over the years, healthcare organisations have focused on the latest technological innovations to overcome their organisational problems. There was rarely a single approach for implementing Information Systems (IS), as healthcare organisations have developed their applications without a common enterprise architectural planning. Nowadays, dozens, if not hundreds of different types of open and proprietary systems exist in healthcare organisations. This growing complexity of healthcare IS has driven IS managers to seek applicable solutions for integrating their systems. As a result, different integration efforts have continuously been made to overcome integration problems. Recently technological developments have emerged in the area of integration technology such as enterprise application integration (EAI) and web services. This paper seeks to expand the knowledge on EAI, and focuses on understanding the EAI benefits and barriers in healthcare organisations.

Keywords: adoption; benefits; barriers; case study; enterprise application integration; EAI; healthcare organisations; information systems; e-healthcare; electronic healthcare; integration infrastructure.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEH.2006.008697

International Journal of Electronic Healthcare, 2006 Vol.2 No.1, pp.66 - 78

Published online: 16 Jan 2006 *

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