Objectives:To describe the use of Electronic Hospital Information System(EHIS) by the staff, to assess the competency of them to handle the EHIS and to assess the computer literacy among health care workers at the Out Patient’s Department(OPD) in District General Hospital(DGH) Trincomalee.Study design:A cross sectional descriptive study. A competency assessment test and a self administered questionnaire were used. Participants: All the staff members operating the EHIS at the OPD in DGH Trincomalee. Results: Regarding the general use of the EHIS medical officers (100%) used the EHIS to write prescriptions,(>70%)to get the patient’s socio-demographic details, enter patient’s history to retrieve previous medical records, to obtain what drugs available and what drugs out of stock at the outdoor pharmacy, for notification of diseases and used less frequently to get the laboratory reports (50-70%). The system was used for 17 tasks out of 20 tasks and most unused tasks were write the diagnosis according to the ICD-10. Nurses and attendents used the system less than half of the tasks for which the system was functional. The pharmacists use of the system was optimal. Overall respondents’ competency of using the system were high (>80%). Conclusions: Majority of staff members had low level of computer literacy. Majority of them used the system successfully. Recommendations: To strengthen the training program,combat several constraints and upgrade the system, provide digital X-ray imaging and download them to CDs and improved to write the diagnosis according to the ICD-10.Key words: Electronic Hospital Information System, Multi Disease Surveillance, Computer Literacy.
Introduction The evolution of medicine during the past few decades has resulted in electronic transformation of patient records which experienced multiple problems such as security, privacy and confidentiality of patient's information. Security, privacy and confidentiality are potentially major problems in electronic health records and no system currently available in the world is 100% secure. The objectives of this study were to describe the major issues related to security, privacy and confidentiality of electronic health information systems and computer based patient record systems and to describe methods currently used to overcome those issues by reviewing published articles. Method These articles were identified by searching the PubMed online electronic bibliographic database [www.ncbi.nih.gov/pubmed] for articles published between January 2000 and January 2013 using the keywords security, privacy, confidentiality, electronic health information systems, and computer based patient record systems. 25 articles were selected for this review after a screening process from among 236 articles identified after the PubMed search. Results All 25 articles (100%) had identified that security, privacy, and confidentiality were major problems with Electronic Health Records. None of them were 100% secure and only two (8%) were Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant. Conclusion Safeguarding the security, privacy and confidentiality is a major problem in electronic health records and a major challenge for governments. However, studies on the security, privacy and confidentiality issues were not conclusive. Alternative approaches considering social, cultural and governmental factors may be needed to be taken into account to deal with the security, privacy and confidentiality issues.
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