Conclusions and Future Research Directions RHINs provide an important mechanism for information automation and sharing among organizations in the rapidly changing health care industry. Since the development of technologies to facilitate integrated health care delivery systems is central to their success, the role of RHINs in supporting health care reform is significant. The emergence of RHINs provides the rare opportunity to conduct meaningful longitudinal studies of the industry-wide impact of this emerging information technology. As an emerging form of IOS, RHINs represent a signifi-cant departure from the IOS documented in prior research. Future research efforts should focus on the identification and documentation of other third-party facilitated IOS structures.
References are available upon request.