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June 10, 2005

Does IT Matter?

John Leslie King is visiting ITU Monday, June 27th. John is Dean and Professor of the School of Information at the University of Michigan, and a member of the Foresight Committee of the IT University of Copenhagen. His research is in the relationship between technical change and social change. His new projects are very interesting, include a study of the institutional forces involved the development of global electronic commerce, and an historical analysis of the evolution of the information disciplines.

John will talk about the value of IT in the 21th century. The talk is a critical response to Nicholas Carr’s article in the Harvard Business Review, but the important point is not whether IT matters, but how IT matters. Information technology has a complicated political history, with cycles of boom and bust. Predictions were followed by disappointing letdowns (friendly robots), yet great accomplishments were never predicted (the Internet). The dot.com of the late 1990's was followed by the dot.bomb right after Y2K (remember that?). In 1999 the pundits were hailing the birth of the information economy; by 2003 the pundits were saying IT doesn't matter. What should we think of this? Does IT Matter? Off course it does!

You can meet John King Monday, June 27th, 15:00 @ ITU, Rued Langgaardsvej 7, KMD-auditoriet (Aud. 2). The talk is open to the public - don’t miss this opportunity!

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June 07, 2005

Enterprise Architecture 2005 Conference Presentation

Today, I had the opportunity to present my review of the enterprise architecture for electronic healthcare record systems in Denmark at the Enterprise Architecture 2005 Conference. One of the scheduled presentations had been cancel and therefore the program comitee had invited the EA working group under the Danish Regions and me to "battle" about the reported content and the points made in the press lately. I had of course coordinated my comments with the working group beforehand, but we had a very lively discussion about the pros and cons of the report. My slides can be found here.

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June 06, 2005

Quoted in Ingeniøren

Last week I was quoted in Ingeniøren – a magazine sent to all 60,000 members of the Society of Danish Engineers (IDA). The article was in line with my comments in Computerworld (cf. below), but journalist, Henning Mølsted also included some very interesting comments from the chairman of the county council in Viborg, Bent Hansen. Here are some of my comments (in Danish):

»Der er milliarder at spare, hvis man kan koordinere it-arkitekturen for de elektroniske patientjournalsystemer bedre,«

»Arkitekturprincipperne er kun første skridt i en lang proces mod egentlige it-standarder. Det er endnu ikke udpeget, hvor sygehusene skal hen med deres EPJ-systemer, og hvad patienterne kan forvente af digitaliseringen,«

Also: »Amtsrådsforeningens regler mangler ifølge Kristian Hjort-Madsen målbare mål, som kan komme patienterne eller sundhedspersonalet til gavn. De kunne f.eks. gælde, hvor meget digitalisering skal luge ud i de omfattende medicineringsfejl på sygehusene, bedre udnyttelse af hospitalsudstyret eller antallet af dage, som udvalgte behandlinger, f.eks. en hofteoperation, må vare. Desuden peger han på, at standarderne endnu ikke lø-ser problemerne med at udveksle digitale patientdata mellem de digtale journaler på tværs af sygehusene.«

I am very happy that my public appearance has stimulated the EA dialogue in the health sector. The debate was continued in Computerworld last week (with Arne Kverneland) and I think that both Ingeniøren and Computerworld will continue the discussion.

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