Using organizational modeling to evaluate health care IS/IT projects

This paper presents a research project that aims at creating a methodology for evaluating IS/IT projects in the Portuguese health care system. This project is being jointly developed by the Center for Organizational Engineering and a task force from Saude XXI, the Portuguese health operational program. In order to create a framework on which to base project evaluation, the project team developed a model of the Portuguese health system, using the CEO framework. The CEO framework is a UML based organizational modeling framework that uses business process and information systems modeling techniques to represent, monitor and simulate organizational behavior. The model created reflects the reality of the Portuguese health care system, including the entities involved, the inter and intra-organizational processes that are executed, the current information systems architecture and the in force information systems strategy. Based on the created organizational model, the project team created a tool that facilitates the evaluation of IS/IT projects, by measuring (1) the support to the current processes; (2) the conformance to the IS architecture and strategy; (3) the relation with other past or current projects. This paper describes the organizational modeling process that was executed, the developed evaluation methodologies and tools, and the preliminary results regarding ongoing project evaluation.