Prioritizing Clinical Information System Project Risk Factors: A Delphi Study

Identifying the risks associated with the implementation of clinical information systems (CIS) in health care organizations can be a major challenge for managers, clinicians, and IT specialists, as there are numerous ways in which they can be described and categorized. Risks vary in nature, severity, and consequence, so it is important that those considered to be high-level risks be identified, understood, and managed. This study addresses this issue by first reviewing the extant literature on IT/CIS project risks, and second conducting a Delphi survey among 21 experts highly involved in CIS projects in Canada. In addition to providing a comprehensive list of risk factors and their relative importance, this study is helpful in unifying the literature on IT implementation and health informatics. Our risk factor-oriented research actually confirmed many of the factors found to be important in both these streams.