Flexible collaboration infrastructures and healthcare information exchange in hospitals: an empirical resource-based perspective

Exchanging health information and data will enhance the efficiency, quality, cost-effectiveness, and even safety of healthcare practices. However, views and strategies differ on how hospitals can facilitate or enable this exchange process. This study explores a relationship between two constructs, i.e., a flexible collaboration infrastructure – an integrated set of IT assets and networking functionalities that support applications and enable business collaboration – and health information exchange. Second, we argue that the strength of this relationship is influenced by the degree to which hospitals deploy security measures. Findings – based on an SEM-PLS analysis on a sample of 983 European hospitals – show a positive relationship between the two constructs. We additionally find that hospitals' security measures to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the data condition this particular relationship. Our findings contribute to the literature and provide valuable insights for hospitals.