A Research Instrument for the Measurement of Information Management and Technology Maturity in the UK National Health Service

Abstract

The IMAGINE programme within the UK's National Health Service (NHS) was designed to raise the quality of information management and technology (IM&T) strategic thinking amongst participating units in what was the Trent Health Region. The national Facilitated Approach to Information Management (FAIM) initiative followed, with the intention of guiding the management team of individual NHS units in their development of their IM&T strategy. Each of these initiatives called for a means of measuring the maturity at unit level of both the IM&T endeavour and the extent of the strategic alignment between the business and IM&T strategies. This paper describes a research instrument that was developed in IMAGINE and used in FAIM to determine a unit's maturity in IM&T and IM&T strategic thinking. The research instrument is presented, together with a typical response document that summarises a unit's IM&T maturity.