Resistance of Healthcare Information Technologies; Literature Review, Analysis, and Gaps

The Implementing of Health Information Technology (HIT) in the healthcare industry is rapidly increasing, yet it is still argued that HIT is being resisted by both practitioners and patients. The hurdles of HIT adoption in this critical area is still considered as under-researched in the IS/IT literature. Research has mainly focused on the adoption aspect of the technology with limited effort towards explaining IT resistance especially in the healthcare setting. HIT investments are costly and expectations of getting better performance, after its implementation, are high. HIT and their applications, if widely spread and meaningfully used, are likely to change the way of applying healthcare services to benefit both patient care and organizational performance. The benefits of HIT in terms of its effect on the healthcare organization performance and patient care cannot be measured if the technology was resisted. This paper provides an extensive review of the literature to uncover the current status of the research in this area, to highlight the main research gaps that need to be addressed, and to reveal how relatively little attention has been paid to understand HIT resistance. Aiming to provide a research agenda that would encourage scholars to conduct research in this area.