Constructive Technology Assessment for HIT development: Learning, feedback and user involvement

Experience and time has shown a need for new evaluation methods for evaluating Health Information Technology (HIT), as summative evaluation methods fail to accommodate the rapid and constant changes in HIT over time and to involve end-users, which has been recognized as an important success factor in HIT development. A new evaluation methodology, in-cluding an analytical framework, has been developed specifi-cally for HIT development: Constructive Technology Assess-ment (CTA) for HIT. It offers solutions to both the problems associated with summative technology evaluation and a way to involve end-users. The CTA methodology is based on a So-cio-technical understanding of technological development as an open ended, emergent process. The CTA was used during the EHR development process in the Region of North Jutland where it proved successful in providing learning and feedback between all relevant groups during all the phases in the pro-cess. Thereby a number of problems were prevented to occur later on. Thus, the CTA method and its framework are useful for evaluators and project-management in order to facilitate and support successful HIT development.