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Clinical Systems and Networks


A healthcare system is a set of activities with a common set of objectives. For each objective it is necessary to choose one, or more, criteria that can be used to measure progress or the lack of it. The dataset of criteria provides another of the essential elements of a system – the feedback loop.

“ The concept of a production system as a socio-technical system designates a general field of study concerned with the interrelations of the technical and socio-psychological organization of industrial production systems. … The concept of a socio-technical system arose from the consideration that any production system requires both a technological organization – equipment and process layout – and a work organization relating to each other those who carry out the necessary tasks. The technological demands place limits on the type of work organization possible, but a work organization has social and psychological properties of its own that are independent of technology….. A socio-technical system must also satisfy the financial conditions of the industry of which it is a part. It must have economic validity. It has in fact social, technological and economic dimensions, all of which are interdependent but all of which have independent values of their own.’ ” (Rice: Productivity and Social Organization.) Source: Trist, E.L., Higgin, G.W., Murray, H., Pollock, A.B. (1963) Organizational Choice. Capabilities of groups at the coal face under changing technologies. The loss, re-discovery and transformation of a work tradition. Tavistock Publications. Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, (p.6).

“What distinguishes systems is that it is a subject which can talk about the other subjects. It is not a discipline to be put in the same set as the others, it is a meta-discipline whose subject matter can be applied within virtually any other discipline.” Source: Checkland, P. (1993) Systems Thinking, Systems Practice. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester. (p. 5).

“The systems paradigm is concerned with wholes and their properties. It is holistic, but not in the usual (vulgar) sense of taking in the whole; systems concepts are concerned with wholes and their hierarchical arrangement rather than with the whole.” Source: Checkland, P. (1993) Systems Thinking, Systems Practice. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester. (p. 13-14).


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Wikipedia

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