Scenario
You are a consultant who has been asked to prepare an evidenced-based Informatics Strategy Report for a health care organisation. The report should be presented in a style that is appropriate for senior directors to read but it must be grounded in evidence and use techniques that have been appropriately referenced.
Your task
Write a report of 3,000 words that presents a health informatics strategy proposal for a health care organisation of your choice. Strategy is politically sensitive so, to make sure that you are free to draw on your own experiences the health care organisation can be anonymised to a fictitious organisation. You may choose to base it on a real health care organisation (there are many trusts that publish their business strategy and plans on the Internet) and/or you may draw your experiences from your current, or a previous, employer (see the guidance on choosing an organisation attached). You will need to describe your organisation, its business strategy and (what you assume about) its current information systems. You are free to make assumptions to make up for limited inside knowledge about the organisation but you must describe and justify these.
Report Structure
The following report structure is recommended but you are welcome to improve on it:
Executive Summary (1 page)
Briefly summarise your assessment of the organisation, its current situation, the analysis that you have conducted, your conclusions and your recommendations.
Business Drivers
Describe the business context of the organisation – its size, scope, purpose, environment, strategic direction and the challenges you believe it faces.
Current Informatics Systems
Describe the nature and state of the current information systems in use in the organisation. Your description should include a current IS Application Architecture diagram, an IS Application Portfolio Matrix of the current systems and a summary of the IS/IT resources available.
Strategic Analysis
Describe the method you have applied, the information sources you have used and any assumptions you have made (describe and justify these). Use at least five of the strategy tools that you have learned about to help you formulate the Informatics Strategy for your organisation. Reference these tools and explain why you selected them. Make sure you draw effective, strategic conclusions from your analysis.
( use the five of the strategy tools that in IS Strategy Toolkit file as below:
Tool 1 – SWOT
Tool 2 – PEST Analysis
Tool 7 – Porter’s Five Forces Model
Tool 13 – Benefit Level Matrix
Tool 14 – Critical Success Factors
Recommendations
Summarise your investigation with a series of recommendations for a successful Informatics Strategy for your organisation. Your recommendation should include a proposed future IS Application Portfolio Matrix and proposed IS Application Architecture diagram and a description of how you would move from the current situation to your proposed future solution. Your recommendations should be justified by the results of your IS strategy formulation and qualified by the assumptions you have made. Care must be taken to align the informatics strategy to what you know or assume about the business strategy. You should explain how your proposal delivers sustainable competitive advantage.
Assessment Criteria
Your assignment should demonstrate that you can:
Apply a range of Informatics Strategy tools to a health informatics context.
Work at a strategic level to explain business and technical issues and opportunities and challenges
Critically evaluate strategic options.
Demonstrate an ability to both understand and work within healthcare domains in the context of information systems strategy.
