Access
Full papers are only accessible to paying members of the society.
Non-members who have registered with the website (eg as part of submitting an abstract, or booking a conference) do not have access to full JOS papers.
Scope
The underpinning philosophy of the journal is that health and healthcare systems are characterized by complexity and interconnectedness, where "everything affects everything else". Thus, problems in healthcare need to be viewed holistically as an integrated system of multiple components (people, organizations, technology and resources) and perspectives. The journal sees the systems approach to be widely applicable to all areas of health and healthcare delivery (e.g., public health, hospitals, primary care, telemedicine, disparities, community health). Hence, the principal aim of the journal is to bring together critical disciplines that have proved themselves already in health, and to leverage these contributions by providing a forum that brings together diverse viewpoints and research approaches (qualitative, quantitative, and conceptual).
Health Systems covers academic disciplines which can contribute to a multi-perspective approach towards healthcare delivery. Thus, the Journal welcomes submissions from a wide range of disciplines and sub-disciplines including (but not limited to) operations research, information systems, design science, nursing, health informatics, industrial and systems engineering, human computer interaction, management science, organizational behavior, communications, public health and epidemiology. Pure science disciplines, such as for example clinical medicine, biochemistry and pharmacology do not fall within the remit of this journal.
A further aim of the journal is to provide a welcoming outlet for innovative interdisciplinary work, in which the combined expertise of researchers from different disciplines contributes to a genuine interdisciplinary outcome. The journal recognizes that often the most interesting problems occur at disciplinary boundaries and would, therefore, particularly like to receive papers that span several disciplines.
Application areas welcomed by the journal include (but are not limited to): healthcare management in general, both at an operational and strategic level; knowledge management, public health and infrastructure; the efficient and effective use of resources; the organization and structuring of healthcare services, from a local to an international level; cultural and behavioral issues; disease prevention, screening and preventative medicine; the evaluation of treatments and interventions; questions about ethics and quality of life; mobile applications; the design and implementation of systems for knowledge creation, storage, and transfer; systems architecture (including interoperability); human resource issues, including training and deployment; patient safety and risk; and technology adoption, diffusion, and evaluation.
Please be aware that all submissions to Health Systems, including commentary from anyone affiliated with the journal, will be subject to review.
To promote the range of topics and disciplines serviced, the journal is supported by area editors focused in the following domains of healthcare systems:
- Health IT Economics
- Health Disparities Modelling
- Health Services Research
- Operations Management and Optimization
- Simulation and Logistics
- System Dynamics
- Mathematical Modelling
- Knowledge Management
- Decision Analysis
- Design Science
- Data Mining/ Data Analytics in Healthcare
- Workflow and Task Analysis in Health Systems
- Architecture of Health Systems
- Human Computer Interaction in Health Systems
- Health System Quality and Evaluation
- Clinical Informatics
- Decision Support Systems
- Mobile Health
- Nursing Informatics
- Telemedicine
- Consumer Health Informatics
- Nursing Informatics
- Public Health Informatics