Understanding Change and Innovation in Healthcare Settings: Reconceptualizing the Active Role of Context

This article discusses the ways in which ‘context’ has been formulated and explored in healthcare settings. We contend that context is an important, but poorly understood mediator of change and innovation and that there is a dearth of empirical work in healthcare studies that adequately deals with context. Drawing on extensive empirical data exploring the career of ‘evidence based’ healthcare innovations, we illustrate that context should not be seen as a backcloth to action but as an interacting element in the change