gms | German Medical Science

Although there is a strong international interest and effort for a safe, effective and efficient use of health information technologies, there is still little consensus on how the concept of such excellent digital health care can be adequately defined and measured. Determining the current state of hospital information systems' development is the basis for strategically aligned digitized processes – both at the institutional level and at the national level. By continuously triangulating the status quo of HIT (Health Information Technology) maturity with individual goals on the one hand and goals set by benchmark institutes' on the other, best practices and clear priorities for further development towards digital excellence can be defined. While setting priorities is particularly important in light of the chronically scarce resources in the health care system, best practices refer primarily to the correct handling of organizational and socio-cultural aspects within digitalisation projects. The need for HIT maturity models led to a variety of different approaches. Their main limitations lie in the almost exclusive focus on technological functionality. HIT maturity is also usually measured by the performance of the data exchange within an institution, without taking into account the increasingly relevant data networking across institutions. Last but not least, the idea of a linear path that leads step by step (or level by level) to a high degree of IT maturity seems rather unrealistic with regard to the obligatory prioritization, the necessity of context-sensitive adoption procedures and rapidly developing HIT innovations. This session will discuss how more recent maturity models can support the complex paths to digital excellence. With regard to the selection of maturity indicators and their systematic modelling, dynamic approaches are of particular importance. But also the question of how the contrary approaches of centralised and highly standardised HIT maturity measurement (e.g. for the purpose of research and/or political control) and decentralised HIT maturity measurement, which are oriented towards local priorities, can be integrated, is discussed.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

The authors declare that an ethics committee vote is not required.