ICT Infrastructure and Network Externalities– two forgotten concepts in Finnish discussion on health care information systems

Abstract

Finland is flooded with ambitious projects to build nationwide health care information system solutions. A key issue to emerge is how to engage potential users, both at individual and organizational levels, to accept these systems and take them into intensive and productive use. Acceptance might be hard to find, as financial calculations showing positive payback on investments to organizations are hard to produce. What should maybe stressed more is that the systems in building phase will bring considerable benefit through infrastructure level services and resulting network externalities to the user community. These two key concepts are shortly discussed in this article, and their application in the health care information systems environment is illustrated.

Keywords

• Health care information systems
• ICT architecture
• network externalities
• acceptance of information system investments