Regional communication within and across health organisations

The health care sector is intrinsically heterogeneous in its organisation. There are distinct, formally independent, organisations or institutions that take part in the delivery of health services: municipalities, counties, hospitals, private health provi ders, (private and public) laboratories and private pharmacies. Yet, the patients, the proper value chain cuts across these organisational boundaries. There are huge problems with ensuring effectiveness through this process as a whole of receiving differe nt health services. These problems are essentially about finding ways to communicating relevant clinical knowledge within and across the different organisations which make up the health care value chain. The problems with inter and intra organisational co mmunication, knowledge sharing and collaboration give rise to notions like continuity of care, shared care or integrated care. Reiterating prevailing thinking in organisation and management science, health policy initiatives in the Western world emphasise strongly the importance of dismantling vertical boundaries in favour of horizontal processes of work and sharing of knowledge. Industrially, we are in the midst of dynamic structural changes fuelled by integration through national and international merge rs and acquisitions alongside structural changes in the market through regionalisation of tenders. On an overall level, this research project aims at generate relevant knowledge of product and process innovation to support health service delivery across the value chain to increase efficiency and improve quality of health delivery to patients. The project consists of the vendors, user-organisations and researchers. The vendors include among others the biggest actors on ICT in Norwegian healthcare (TietoE nator, Siemens and Dips), the user organisations include several university hospitals, and the research partners constitute a collaboration activity between UiTø and NTNU/NSEP.