Globetrotting health information systems

Abstract

Cases from an international network, active in health information systems development and implementation in “developing countriesâ€, are presented in order to show a variety of interplays between the same IT agency and varying local settings. By using the same institutional lens, a theoretically informed view of empirical data is provided. Trajectories of implementation in Ethiopia, Botswana, and India present two different, and often diverging, levels of contextualization of the IT artefact: in the local context and in the (possibly emerging) organizational field of health information systems in “developing countriesâ€.

By discussing the emergence of an organizational field of health information systems across “developing countriesâ€, but so far not showing many traces of isomorphism, this paper aims at enlarging the empirical basis of what is considered relevant in information systems research.