Virtual Organisations in Healthcare: Organisation, People and Technology

This paper describes a virtual organisation in healthcare, emphasising collaboration around a common task (organisational aspect), a virtual administrative domain spanning several information systems using communication technology (technological aspect), and the way this requires or causes changes in people's behaviour (social aspect). We give an inventory of the existing organisation, technology and communication patterns within a group of healthcare institutions in the Netherlands and then describe the design, development and validation of a mobile application to support the diagnosis of strokes. The pilot indicates that supporting virtual organisations is a vast challenge, but not necessarily a complex endeavour. This work shows the benefits of starting with a concrete case and the importance of understanding the working processes before identifying - together with stakeholders - possible adaptations in the working processes as well as the required technology support and security levels.