The Unintended Effects of Digitization on Science: Collaboration and the Productivity J-Curve
Prof. Max Wang
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Business
Columbia Business School
Columbia University
Digitization transforms knowledge production in teams by improving data interpretability and shareability. This paper validates this claim by estimating the effect of adopting Electronic Health Records (EHR) on scientists working at US hospitals. EHR is a digitization technology that standardizes and centralizes patient record data. It is designed to improve care delivery, and its adoption has been regulated since 2009. Using a panel of scientists from 148 teaching hospitals, I show that digitization increases collaboration by 6.5% and intellectual diversity by 1.3%. This effect from EHR adoption surpasses those of conventional health information technologies without restrictive data standards and intensifies when collaborators are sharing a common operating system. I then show that digitization compromises research outcomes in citations and novelty, likely due to adjustment costs, and senior scientists, whose experiences attenuate adjustment costs, benefit more from working with EHR. I corroborate these analyses using interviews with real-life medical scientists.
