A Manifesto for e-health success: the key role for ANT.

Abstract

Healthcare is the biggest service industry on the globe. Sadly, it has yet to realize the full potential of e-health, which is in stark contrast to other e-business initiatives such as e-government and e-education, e-finance, or e-commerce. However, as all OECD countries grapple with key challenges which are impacting the delivery of cost effective quality healthcare, all are agreed that e-health may hold the key. This makes it more important than ever for successful adoption of e-health. It is the contention of this paper that to be e-health prepared is necessary but not sufficient for successful e-health solutions to be realized. The paper asserts that it is only by embracing a rich theoretical lens of analysis that the full potential of e-health can be harnessed and thus it proffers ANT (Actor-network Theory) as such a lens.