Title: Establishing strategic alliance among hospitals through SAIS: a case study in Taiwan

Authors: Won-Fu Hung, Hsin-Ginn Hwang, Chechen Liao

Addresses: Department of Information Management, National Chung Cheng University, Ming-Hsiung, Chia-Yi 621, Taiwan. ' Department of Information Management, National Chung Cheng University, Ming-Hsiung, Chia-Yi 621, Taiwan. ' Department of Information Management, National Chung Cheng University, Ming-Hsiung, Chia-Yi 621, Taiwan

Abstract: Due to a reformed healthcare insurance system and a gradually decreasing public affairs| budget by the government year by year, Central Taiwan Office (CTO), the Department of Health (DOH) in Taiwan, initiated a strategic alliance project of the hospitals subordinated to the DOH in November, 2001. This project was a five-year plan with an attempt to expand and develop three more strategic alliances covering the northern, southern and eastern regions of Taiwan respectively. Through a cooperative system, such an alliance allows the following: resource sharing, technique collaboration, marketing affiliations and so on. In order to decrease operation management costs and improve the quality of service at hospitals, the strategic alliance practice is supported by IS. We call this alignment the IS-enabled strategic alliance. All the IS-enabled functions are supported by the Strategic Alliance Information System (SAIS). In this article, the SAIS developed by the CTO of the DOH is introduced.

Keywords: joint marketing; joint performance evaluation system; joint purchasing; resource-based theory; resource-dependent theory; strategic alliances; Strategic Alliance Information System; Taiwan; hospital alliances; information systems.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEH.2005.006475

International Journal of Electronic Healthcare, 2005 Vol.1 No.3, pp.277 - 290

Published online: 13 Mar 2005 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article