User-centered healthcare IT: meaningful or meaningless?

This panel aims to discuss concepts, assumptions and visions of user- centered information technology for healthcare. It presents two opposite views on the subject. The discussion is informed by findings of three research projects evaluating the implementation of e-prescribing systems, electronic transmission of prescriptions, and electronic health records in the UK. The timeliness and perhaps urgency of such a debate are due to the incessantly increasing worldwide computerization of healthcare, concurrent to an ambiguity of the effect of IT on care processes, outcomes and user satisfaction

The Connected Community Pharmacy: Benefits for Healthcare and Implications for Health Policy

The need for interoperability of healthcare Information Technology (IT) systems in order to provide safe, efficient, and coordinated healthcare is universally recognized. Various health economies, such as the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia, are seeking to develop regional, state-wide, or national systems of healthcare interoperability. In England, the community pharmacy network is a significant health provider, with important implications for provision of healthcare in deprived areas because of its accessibility. Historically, however, community pharmacies have operated on a silo basis, and have not shared information on their activities with, or been able to access information from, other National Health Service (NHS) healthcare providers. The development of services such as the Electronic Prescription Service and the Summary Care Record in England have helped to connect community pharmacy with the NHS infrastructure, and more comprehensive systems and datasets are proposed to integrate community pharmacy with the NHS in future. This paper will review the benefits of the connected community pharmacy, based on developments to date and reviewing evidence from other countries. It will describe some of the future developments that will support the connected community pharmacy in England, and discuss some of the implications for pharmacists and health policy makers

Mapping stakeholders for system evaluation - the case of the Electronic Prescription Service in England

This paper discusses the process of identifying stakeholders for the evaluation of health information systems through a map. Defining the multiplicity of stakeholders associated with a new system as well as the nature of their relationships is an important aspect of evaluating any intervention. We report a study of the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) in primary care in England. We describe the complexity associated with the process of identifying stakeholders and illustrating their dynamic relationships. Reflecting upon our experience of map-making and map-using, we discuss the role of a stake- holder map to generate and communicate knowledge. The EPS stakeholder map – in its variety of possible alternative representations – reveals the complexity of the electronic pre- scribing scenario and the challenge of its evaluation. Recog- nising the drawbacks of a static two dimensional representa- tion, we argue that a dynamic use of a stakeholder map and a reflective map-making practice is useful and important for the evaluation of IT programmes in healthcare

The evaluation of the electronic prescription service in primary care: final report on the findings from the evaluation in early implementer sites

This report presents the findings from The Evaluation of the Electronic Prescription Service in Primary Care, a Connecting for Health Evaluation Programme commissioned project. The projects aim, as stated in the proposal, was to evaluate Phase 3 (Release 2) of the Electronic Prescription Service (hereafter EPS R2) to determine effects on patient safety, satisfaction with care, work processes and economics. The methods used were a blend of ethnographically informed quantitative and qualitative approaches

Mapping stakeholders for system evaluation - the case of the electronic prescription service in England

This paper discusses the process of identifying stakeholders for the evaluation of health information systems through a map. Defining the multiplicity of stakeholders associated with a new system as well as the nature of their relationships is an important aspect of evaluating any intervention. We report a study of the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) in primary care in England. We describe the complexity associated with the process of identifying stakeholders and illustrating their dynamic relationships. Reflecting upon our experience of map-making and map-using, we discuss the role of a stakeholder map to generate and communicate knowledge. The EPS stakeholder map - in its variety of possible alternative representations - reveals the complexity of the electronic prescribing scenario and the challenge of its evaluation. Recognising the drawbacks of a static two dimensional representation, we argue that a dynamic use of a stakeholder map and a reflective map-making practice is useful and important for the evaluation of IT programmes in healthcare