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e-Health Complexity and Actor–Network Theory

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Pervasive Health Knowledge Management

Part of the book series: Healthcare Delivery in the Information Age ((Healthcare Delivery Inform. Age))

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Abstract

e-health constitutes the use of digitally enabled technologies to facilitate the exchange of clinical, administrative, and transactional healthcare data ubiquitously and has the potential to offer enormous value to all actors operating in healthcare. Delivering healthcare benefits by way of e-health solutions, however, remains an elusive goal for e-health entrepreneurs. The inherent complexity of modern healthcare settings has much to answer for this. In attempts to improve current understanding, this chapter argues how e-health research can be enhanced using actor–network theory (ANT) as an appropriate and powerful tool that can enable researchers to “follow the actors” and, in the process, tackle the underlying complexities of modern healthcare environments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Adelaide Business School, The University of Adelaide, 10 Pulteney Street, 5005, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Indrit Troshani

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  1. Indrit Troshani
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Correspondence to Indrit Troshani .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Coventry University, Health Design and Technology Institute (, Puma Way, COVENTRY West Midlands, CV1 2TT, United Kingdom

    Rajeev Bali

  2. The University of Adelaide Business Scho, Pulteney Street 10, Adelaide, 5005, South Australia, Australia

    Indrit Troshani

  3. Glen Crescent 131, Thornhill, L4J 4W4, Ontario, Canada

    Steve Goldberg

  4. , RMIT University, School of Business Information Technolog, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne VIC, 3001, Australia

    Nilmini Wickramasinghe

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Troshani, I. (2013). e-Health Complexity and Actor–Network Theory. In: Bali, R., Troshani, I., Goldberg, S., Wickramasinghe, N. (eds) Pervasive Health Knowledge Management. Healthcare Delivery in the Information Age. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4514-2_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4514-2_5

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