Goal alignment and coordination might be the most pressing issues of the U.S. healthcare system as it faces classic failure on all three critical dimensions of cost, quality and access. Our science is outstanding but our management leaves much to be desired as we spend too much on unnecessary care while many are left out. As Professor Wickramasinghe emphasises, this is less a failure of will than reflective of deficiencies in systems, information and incentives. This outstanding book, building on solid theory and field research, proposes a way out of this dilemma. The role of information communication technology is increasingly well recognised as important to the future of the health system. However, for most analysts, it is seen as a way to improve administrative efficiency or provide mandatory reporting not as a way to fundamentally change relationships in the health system. Yet it is clear from this work, that available technology can be a critical catalyst in aligning the goals of the various players in the health sector, focusing their energy toward desired outcomes and substantially improving performance. The contribution of this research is in providing some understanding of how this can be done in various disparate healthcare settings.

(J. B. Silvers, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio)

Information Communication Technology (ICT) and more especially enterprise wide ICT is a key tool pervasive throughout the business community This book presents critical issues and key findings from a longitudinal study that was conducted to explore the research question “How can ICT be used as a tool to achieve goal alignment?”

Dr Nilmini Wickramasinghe (PhD; MBA; GradDipMgtSt; B.Sc.; A.mus.A, piano; A.mus.A, violin) researches and teaches in several areas within information systems including knowledge management, e-commerce and m-commerce, and organisational impacts of technology. Over the last 10 years, Dr Wickramasinghe’s research has focused at the confluence of knowledge management, ICTs and healthcare operations. She is well published in all these areas with more than 50 referred papers and several books. In addition, she regularly presents her work throughout North America, as well as in Europe and Australasia. Dr. Wickramasinghe is the U.S. representative of the Health Care Technology Management Association (HCTM), an international organisation that focuses on critical healthcare issues and the role of technology within the domain of healthcare. She is the associate director of the Center for the Management of Medical Technologies (CMMT), a unique research-oriented centre with key research foci on knowledge management, healthcare, and the confluence of these domains and holds an associate professor position at the Stuart School of Business, IIT. In addition, she has been conferred as a visiting professor in knowledge management at Coventry University’s BICORE (biomedical computing and engineering technology) HCKM group in the UK and is a visiting faculty member at the University of Cooperative Education BA, Heidenheim, Germany. Dr Wickramasinghe is the editor-in-chief of two scholarly journals: International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations (IJNVO) and International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology (IJBET), both published by InderScience.

Contents
Healthcare and Technology

ICT, Goal Alignment and Knowledge Workers

Pure HMO

Best HMO

Extending Agency Theory

Epilogue.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wickramasinghe, Nilmini Sunethra

Achieving goal alignment with healthcare knowledge workers through ICT use

   Bibliography

   Includes index

      ISBN 978-1-920889-17-3 (paper back)

      ISBN 978-1-920889-16-6 (hard cover)

   1. Goal setting in personnel management – Technological innovations.

   2. Communication in medicine – Technological innovations.

   3. Medicine – Communication systems – Technological innovations.

   4. Communication in personnel management.

   5. Medical personnel.

   6. Communication in organizations. 

   I. Title.

610.696

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Price: AUS $65.00 (Paperback), AUS $95.00 (Hardcover) plus postage/packaging of AUS $10.00 per order within Australia, or AUS $20.00 overseas.

Orders should be sent to:
   Heidelberg Press             (Fax +61 3 9459 8827)
   PO Box 234
   Heidelberg 3084, Australia.