The Adoption of New Technology Systems

Adoption of New Technology Systems
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Adopting new technology within an institution or organization will serve as a boon to its operations and its profit margins. However, fully integrating and adopting a new technology is not an easy task and the attempt will encounter several challenges. If these challenges are not handled appropriately, the chances of the innovation or new technology finding acceptance within the organization is minimized. Therefore, as an innovator or the party introducing the innovation, one must ensure that they identify these areas of concern to ensure that the innovation finds ready acceptance among its adopters. The paper aims to use Rogers’ theory of diffusion of innovation in attempting to introduce a new electronic health records system (EHRs) to be used by nurses in a health care facility.
Introduction of a new technology or innovation must meet with some challenges from the outset. Rogers (2003) observed that there are four critical elements that eventually determine how well a new innovation will be received. The first of these elements is the innovation itself; the second is the channels of communication that are used when introducing the innovation, as well as the timing of the technologies’ introduction and the existing social system. These elements go a long way in determining the way the technology or innovation will be received. In the case of the nurses, the timing should be in such a way that adopting the new technology will not make them miss some of their targets or influence their work output (Elgin &Bergero, 2015). Also, the technology should be friendly to them and enable them work efficiently and the learning curve should not be steep.
The implementation of the new EHRs has already started encountering some undercurrents of resistance. While this is a threat to the adoption of the new system, it also presents an opportunity for the developers to find out what the issue is with the nurses. This information will serve as an important factor in enabling the nurse facilitator to identify the issues and address them to ensure smooth adoption of the system by the nurses. Finding out what the nurses dislike about the system gives the developers an opportunity to try and restructure the presentation of the innovation to find greater acceptance among the nurses (Elgin &Bergero, 2015).
Nurses being the adopters of the technology ultimately have the last say on the successful implementation of the system. As a facilitator, the successful implementation of the new system should follow the opinions of Rogers (2003) on the qualities that determine how individuals receive new technologies. Rogers opined that individuals will take into consideration several factors before they can adopt new technologies or innovations. One of these factors is the relative advantage that the new innovation will accord them. They must see that it will be an improvement on the existing way of doing things. They also have to ensure that the new innovation is compatible with their ethics and practices, additionally; an innovation that has a steep learning curve will be met with resistance. The individual must also be able to try o...