Technology and Information Management Supporting Resilience in Healthcare and Rescue Systems

Abstract

Health care and rescue system resilience is the multifactoral sum of technology, humans, information, processes, and management. The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has been a catalyst for transformation globally and tested the resilience of health care and rescue systems in many ways. The relevant use of technology has been acknowledged as one important element in developing resilience, but there are still very few empirical studies that have studied the role of technology in supporting system-level resilience. This chapter examines how information system solutions have advanced system resilience during the COVID-19 crisis through a literature review and empirical case study of the Finnish health care and rescue sector. According to the results of this study, the use of different technology solutions and digital services in health care and rescue has increased during the pandemic, as the crisis has accelerated the development of an information system (IS) for data sharing as well as experiments on AI and robotics. However, in developing IS solutions, several challenges arise that are specific to the health care and rescue sector that need to be taken into account: strict legislation, the privacy of health data, and the fact that implementation of a digital service cannot compromise patient care.