Conference Paper
Expanding hospital infrastructures: boundary resources for peripheral actors
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Text/Conference Paper
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Date
2019
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Publisher
European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (EUSSET)
Abstract
Fostering innovation while maintaining a traditional IT infrastructure is challenging. We have conducted a qualitative study in the health sector, following three ICT-related innovation initiatives in a hospital. The innovators sought to connect the new solutions with the complex hospital digital infrastructure but the governance regime was not conducive to experimental development. We describe the challenges of relating to the existing information infrastructure and thereby identify the requirements for innovative projects to be sustained. In our analysis we zoom-in on the problematic “meeting points” between the innovation initiatives and the pre-existing infrastructure, as these reveal which capabilities and resources are required for the existing infrastructure to accomodate novelty. Conceptually, we frame these as boundary resources. Our study contributes a concrete description of the resources that are required if large, entrenched infrastructures shall be able to harness innovation.