An Analysis of the Evolving Intellectual Structure of Health Information Systems Research in the Information Systems Discipline

The rapid evolution of health information systems (Health IS) research has led to many significant contributions. However, while the Health IS subset of information systems (IS) scholarship has considerably grown over the past two decades, this growth has led to questions regarding the current intellectual structure of this area of inquiry. In an effort to more fully understand how Health IS research has contributed to the IS discipline, and what this may mean for future Health IS research in the IS domain, we conduct an in-depth evaluation of Health IS research published in mainstream IS journals. We apply citation analysis, latent semantic analysis (LSA), and social network analysis (SNA) to our data set of Health IS articles in order to: (1) identify Health IS research themes and thematic shifts, (2) determine which Health IS research themes are cohesive (versus disparate), (3) identify which Health IS research themes are central (versus peripheral), (4) clarify networks of researchers (i.e., thought leaders) contributing to these research themes, and (5) provide insights into the connection of Health IS research to its reference disciplines. Overall, we contribute a systematic description and explanation of the intellectual structure of Health IS research and highlight how the existing intellectual structure of Health IS research provides opportunities for future research.