A Systems Model of HIT-Induced Complexity

Background While health information technology (HIT) is playing a key role in transforming the healthcare system into a collaborative patient centered system, it is common for unintended consequences (UICs) to emerge post-HIT implementation. Healthcare delivery is a complex adaptive system and UICs occur because of multiple interactions between technology, users, organizational policies, and other situational contexts. Understanding the nature of these interactions and the manner in which they occur is a necessary first step to managing UICs from HIT implementation.