Content area

Abstract

Healthcare delivery systems operate as complex socio-technical Systems-of-Systems (SoS), where autonomous entities—hospitals, insurers, laboratories, and technology vendors—must coordinate to achieve collective outcomes that exceed individual capabilities. Despite substantial investment in interoperability standards and regulatory frameworks, persistent fragmentation undermines care quality, operational efficiency, and systemic adaptability. This fragmentation stems from a fundamental governance paradox: how can independent systems retain operational autonomy while adhering to shared rules that ensure systemic resilience? This paper addresses this challenge by advancing a governance-oriented architecture grounded in Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) principles. We reinterpret core OOP constructs—encapsulation, modularity, inheritance, polymorphism, and interface definition—as governance mechanisms that enable autonomy through principled constraints while fostering structured coordination across heterogeneous systems. Central to this framework is the Confluence Interoperability Covenant (CIC), a socio-technical governance artifact that functions as an adaptive interface mechanism, codifying integrated legal, procedural, and technical standards without dictating internal system architectures. To validate this approach, we develop a functional proof-of-concept simulation using Petri Nets, modeling constituent healthcare systems as autonomous entities interacting through CIC-governed transitions. Comparative simulation results demonstrate that CIC-based governance significantly reduces fragmentation (from 0.8077 to 0.1538) while increasing successful interactions fivefold (from 68 to 339 over 400 steps). This work contributes foundational principles for SoS Engineering and offers practical guidance for designing scalable, interoperable governance architectures in mission-critical socio-technical domains.

Details

1009240
Business indexing term
Title
Towards Governance of Socio-Technical System of Systems: Leveraging Lessons from Proven Engineering Principles
Publication title
Systems; Basel
Volume
13
Issue
12
First page
1113
Number of pages
30
Publication year
2025
Publication date
2025
Publisher
MDPI AG
Place of publication
Basel
Country of publication
Switzerland
Publication subject
e-ISSN
20798954
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
Document type
Journal Article
Publication history
 
 
Online publication date
2025-12-10
Milestone dates
2025-09-26 (Received); 2025-12-05 (Accepted)
Publication history
 
 
   First posting date
10 Dec 2025
ProQuest document ID
3286356757
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/towards-governance-socio-technical-system-systems/docview/3286356757/se-2?accountid=208611
Copyright
© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.
Last updated
2025-12-26
Database
2 databases
  • Coronavirus Research Database
  • ProQuest One Academic