Effective elements on e-health deployment in Iran

Abstract

The structural features of Iran's health system obligate the development of information technology in medical field and design of an effective e-health system. Due to the importance of this issue, the current study was performed to identify the effective elements on e-health deployment in order to codify a comprehensive plan for Iran. The practical, descriptive-comparative study was conducted using semiqualitative methods with mathematical analysis. The study populations included the following countries: Australia, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Britain, Turkey and Iran. Due to the comparative nature of the study, there were no samples and the selected countries were chosen as the sources of information. This study was performed in four stages including studying the current situation and the history of issue in Iran through documents and evidences, comprehensive study of e-health in selected countries by searching through books, materials and also the web, suggesting the primary proposal and eventually determining the proposal's credibility and presenting the final plan using the semi-Delphi technique. The findings of the study indicated that e-health deployment priorities included individual health care identifier (IHI), patient ID, e-health card, increasing investment in information technology, electronic appointment registration, electronic prescribing and finally, telemedicine service. Strategies commonly aimed to use the information technology to provide health care services based on patients centrality. E-health infrastructures included physical networks, legal infrastructures, education, preparation and performance of e-health operation. The necessary resources to establish ehealth included financial, data and other resources. The deployment of e-health included e-health record, e-health card, telemedicine service and health portals. The major obstacles to establish e-health in Iran included lack of a specific strategy, ambiguous and complicated information technology infrastructure, two cultural and educational problems in relation to training and practice in information technology and communication skills, rapid changes of managers especially in Ministry of Health and Welfare, not being able to attract skilled information technology technicians in e-health field, unclear mechanism to fund e-health system, lack of codified technical standards and weak health service implementation methods. Infrastructure of information and communication technology in Iran is complex and ambiguous and e-health strategies and priorities have not been determined yet.

The Effect of Information Technology on Healthcare Improvement from Clinicians’ Perspective

“…The healthcare sector is one area that has been strongly affected by IT (Hosseini & Asefzadeh, 2009;Nasiripour et al, 2012;Ajami, Ketabi, Saghaeiannejad, & Heidari, 2010;Barzekar & Karami, 2014). The goal of applying IT to healthcare is to accelerate the collection of and ease of access to information.…”

“…Information technology (IT) has transformed the infrastructure of human life (Hosseini & Asefzadeh, 2009;Nasiripour, Rahmani, Radfar, & Najafbeigi, 2012;Rezaeihachesoo, Fozoonkhah, Safaei, & Afshar, 2010). The healthcare sector is one area that has been strongly affected by IT (Hosseini & Asefzadeh, 2009;Nasiripour et al, 2012;Ajami, Ketabi, Saghaeiannejad, & Heidari, 2010;Barzekar & Karami, 2014).…”

Efisiensi Perangkat Pendukung dalam Pelaksanaan Sistem Informasi e-Puskesmas Kota Sungai Penuh

“…Berdasarkan hasil analisis penelitian didapatkan p value 0,000 (<0,05) dan OR = 18,000. Hasil penelitian ini sejalan dengan penelitian Mirani et al, (2014) bahwa untuk meningkatkan kualitas layanan kesehatan perlu adanya aplikasi data layanan standar agar dapat diakses dengan mudah dan tersedia pada saat dibutuhkan. Sedangkan Koch et al, (2014) berpendapat bahwa aplikasi otentik berhubungan signifikan positif terhadap indikasi penurunan kualitas laporan data secara elektronik salah satunya berasal dari sistem aplikasi yang memerlukan pembaharuan dan pengawasan petugas.…”

“…Berdasarkan hasil analisis penelitian didapatkan p value 0,001 (<0,05) dan OR = 9,472. Hasil penelitian ini sejalan dengan penelitian Mirani et al, (2014) bahwa laporan e-kesehatan 83% dipengaruhi oleh adanya jaringan internet yang memadai agar mudah diakses dan kualitas pelayanan kesehatan meningkat. Pada penelitian bahwa salah satu faktor penghambat terlaksana sistem informasi elektronik web adalah kurangnya nirkabel konektivitas jaringan internet yang berdampak pada efisiensi mutu pelayanan.…”

Identification of Fundamental Issues Relevant to Implementing Electronic Health Record Medication Reconciliation: Case of Noor Hospital in Iran

“…For exemplification, conducted studies in Iran by (Borhani, Lashkari, Sabzevari, & Abbaszadeh, 2013;Maslakpak & Safaie, 2016;Vakili, Abedi, Afshari, & Kaboli, 2015) deal with telephone or mobile health monitoring. Conducted studies in Iran by (Ajami, Ketabi, Isfahani, & Heidari, 2011;Nasiripour, Rahmani, Radfar, & Najafbeigi, 2012;Salehahmadi & Hajialiasghari, 2013) deal with electronic health and implementation of telemedicine. Conducted studies in Iran by (Farahani, Sharifi, Ayat, & Moghaddam, 2014;Hekmat et al, 2016;Jahanbakhsh, Sharifi, & Ayat, 2014)deal with information systems and web-based training in the hospitals.…”