Context Sensitive Health Informatics

Healthcare information technologies are now routinely deployed and used in a wide variety of healthcare contexts in which they need to be smoothly integrated. Contexts of use of IT in health care differ in terms of workplace, workflows, organisations, habits of work, type and expertise, expectations, and preferences of users, physical implementations, patients’ characteristics, time and workload, etc. The design, implementation, and evaluation of safe, effective, efficient and easy to adopt health informatics therefore require proper consideration of human and organizational factors. Health care organizations, health policy makers and regulatory bodies globally are starting to acknowledge this essential role of human and organisational factors for safe and effective health information technology and progressively incorporate them into national and international regulations and safety initiatives.