| U.S. healthcare spending has been on the rise significantly over the past decade. To combat these trends, healthcare organizations are undergoing a significant shift away from historical fee-for-service payment models and toward an emphasis on value based care delivery. An area of opportunity exists within healthcare organizations to leverage novel data analytic approaches to identify new focus areas and influence improved decision-making. GIS technologies, as an extension of Business Intelligence, offer many capabilities that can be leveraged for this purpose.;An Action Design Research method was applied within three organizations --- Loma Linda University Health as a healthcare provider, Inland Empire Health Plan as an insurer, and the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health as a community health organization. A series of semi-structured interviews with executives uncovered key business imperatives at each organization. Artifact-centric Business Process Modeling was then subsequently utilized to model the current business processes around those imperatives, and to identify the spatial data considerations within those processes. Various GIS technologies were then utilized to create novel IT artifacts as examples of how GIS can influence improved decision-making in healthcare.;Primary business imperatives were identified within each organization. From these imperatives, five novel IT artifacts were created as GIS tools that would aid in healthcare decision-making.;The findings suggest that the Action Design Research approach can be successful in identifying novel applications of GIS in areas of healthcare that were previously underrepresented in IST research literature. As such, the study found that GIS is useful to assist healthcare decision makers improve operational decisions within organizations. |
