Users as Heterogeneous Engineers - The Challenge of Designing Sustainable Information Systems in Health Care

Designing sustainable information systems in healthcare contexts are difficult. Several studies points out a gap between the designers and users of such systems. Traditionally, the role of the users is to inform the designers about their practice, which then enables the designers to build the system. However, in this paper we emphasize a wider perspective on the user role, and conceptualize the users as heterogeneous engineers by demonstrating that they play a key part in negotiating many diverging interests among multiple stakeholders. Since users juxtapose and relate heterogeneous elements, our aim is to illustrate that users not only influence the design of sustainable information systems, but also their deployment and support. Our contribution is to highlight the user´s coordinating role as heterogeneous engineers in IS implementation projects. We assume the paper will be useful and supportive to future IS research and projects.