Yee Kwang Chien, Miils Erin, Airey Caroline
Royal Hobart Hospital, Tasmania, Australia.
Stud Health Technol Inform. 2008;136:496-501.
The current healthcare delivery model will not meet future healthcare demands. The only sustainable healthcare future is one that best leverages advances in technology to improve productivity and efficiency. Information communication technology (ICT) has, therefore, been touted as the panacea of future healthcare challenges. Many ICT projects in healthcare, however, fail to deliver on their promises to transform the healthcare system. From a technologist's perspective, this is often due to the lack of socio-technical consideration. From a socio-cultural perspective, however, there is often strong inertia to change. While the utilisation of user-centred design principles will generate a new wave of enthusiasm among technologists, this has to be matched with socio-cultural changes within the healthcare system. Generation Y healthcare workers might be the socio-cultural factor required, in combination with new technology, to transform the healthcare system. Generation Y has generated significant technology-driven changes in many other industries. The socio-cultural understanding of generation Y healthcare workers is essential to guide the design and implementation of ICT solutions for a sustainable healthcare future. This paper presents the initial analysis of our qualitative study which aims to generate in-depth conceptual insights of generation Y healthcare workers and their view of ICT in healthcare. Our results show that generation Y healthcare workers might assist future ICT implementation in healthcare. This paper, however, argues that significant changes to the current healthcare organisation will be required in order to unleash the full potential of generation Y workers and ICT implementation. Finally, this paper presents some strategies to empower generation Y workers as change agents for a sustainable future healthcare system.
当前的医疗服务模式将无法满足未来的医疗需求。唯一可持续的医疗未来是最能利用技术进步来提高生产力和效率的未来。因此，信息通信技术（ICT）被吹捧为解决未来医疗挑战的万灵药。然而，医疗领域的许多ICT项目未能兑现其变革医疗系统的承诺。从技术专家的角度来看，这通常是由于缺乏社会技术方面的考虑。然而，从社会文化的角度来看，变革往往存在强大的惯性。虽然运用以用户为中心的设计原则会在技术专家中引发新一波热情，但这必须与医疗系统内的社会文化变革相匹配。千禧一代医疗工作者可能是与新技术相结合来变革医疗系统所需的社会文化因素。千禧一代在许多其他行业引发了重大的技术驱动变革。对千禧一代医疗工作者的社会文化理解对于指导为可持续医疗未来设计和实施ICT解决方案至关重要。本文展示了我们定性研究的初步分析，该研究旨在深入洞察千禧一代医疗工作者及其对医疗领域ICT的看法。我们的结果表明，千禧一代医疗工作者可能有助于未来医疗领域的ICT实施。然而，本文认为，为了充分发挥千禧一代工作者和ICT实施的全部潜力，当前的医疗组织需要进行重大变革。最后，本文提出了一些策略，以使千禧一代工作者成为可持续未来医疗系统的变革推动者。
