IT Governance and Its Impact on the Swiss Healthcare

Organizational structures, legal restraints and over the years increased heterogeneous IT systems are just a few aspects which make the healthcare sector a sensible field for the implementation of IT governance. Therefore, an integrated and comprehensive approach to the governance of IT and its resources is becoming critical to more effectively align, invest, measure, deploy and sustain the strategic and tactical direction and value proposition of IT in support of the business. This paper points out the role of IT governance in the healthcare sector and focuses on the expectations and challenges to IT governance from the healthcare point of view. In the last years a range of best practice models as well as proprietary frameworks have been developed which are also summarized under the topic of IT governance. This paper gives an overview of the interrelated frameworks and best practice models and gives an outlook of the related future research. A survey will help to find out about the common IT governance models already used in the healthcare sector and will try to answer the question if they really meet the requirements of the healthcare sector as a complex and heterogeneous economic sector.