Applying Social Network Analysis in a Healthcare Setting

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Author(s): Salvatore Parise (Babson College, USA)
Copyright: 2008
Pages: 9
Source title: Encyclopedia of Healthcare Information Systems
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Nilmini Wickramasinghe (Illinois Institute of Technology, USA)and Eliezer Geisler (Illinois Institute of Technology, USA)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-889-5.ch013

Keywords: Health Information Systems / Medical Information Science Reference / Medicine & Healthcare

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Abstract

The people-to-people relationships where knowledge work actually gets performed in organizations are called social networks, and they may be in complete contradiction to the information flows expected, based on looking at the organizational chart of formal roles or titles. These informal or social networks are playing an increasingly important role in the healthcare industry, as medical and clinical knowledge needs to be shared effectively between people within and among healthcare organizations. Social network analysis (SNA) is a research methodology to analyze networks between people, groups, organizations, and systems within and across organizations (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). The results of the analysis inform the researcher of both the structure of the network, as well as the positions of nodes or people in the network. This article provides a description of how SNA can be applied in a healthcare setting.

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Applying Social Network Analysis in a Healthcare Setting

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