DISA SEMINAR

Healthcare Rural-Urban Inequality Challenge: Transformative Roles of Information Technology

Speaker
Dr Tan Chuan Hoo, Associate Professor, School of Computing

31 May 2019 Friday, 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM

Executive Classroom, COM2-04-02

Abstract:

Healthcare rural-urban access inequality, which indicates the disparity among rural and urban people with severe medical ailments in gaining access to high-quality healthcare services, is a critical and enduring societal challenge. Although much hope has recently been pinned on the use of health information technology (HIT) to alleviate this challenge, the realized societal impact of HIT is unclear. On the basis of social transformation theory, technology affordance theory, and extant HIT literature, we conducted a qualitative study with two rounds of data collection in Mainland China. Analysis results from rich archival and interview data help build a theory of HIT solution for the healthcare rural-urban access inequality challenge. The key to address the focal challenge is affordance actualization (between affordance potency, and shared abilities and beliefs of key groups of actors) for each HIT intervention and the joint effect of multiple HIT interventions through collective affordances and shared affordances. This research has important theoretical contributions to HIT literature and theories. The practical implications for policymakers are also discussed.

Biodata:

Chuan-Hoo TAN is an Associate Professor at the Department of Information Systems and Analytics, National University of Singapore. His current research interests include two streams: (1) IT design and evaluation (including human-computer interaction, digital commerce, and business analytics); and (2) IT implementation and management (including open innovation, IT design, adoption, and usage). His articles have appeared in MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Long Range Planning, Decision Support Systems, Annual of Operations Research, and others. He is currently serving as an associate editor for MIS Quarterly as well as editorial board members in several journals in the field of Information Systems.