The Role of Information Quality in Healthcare Organizations: A Multi-Disciplinary Literature Review

The volume of data in healthcare repositories is growing exponentially, giving increased concerns on its organizational implications. The quality of data and information represents a considerable risk for organizations, particularly in healthcare, where consequences of poor quality may be fatal for patients. This research seeks to investigate the role of information quality in organizations, by reviewing multi-disciplinary research literature and provide a framework of the relations between IQ and its organizational implications. Findings suggest that research on information quality has focused on different aspects of organizational impact: organizational performance, process performance, process improvement, and decision-making. However, since the research is fragmented and scarce, this paper suggests a shift in research focus from defining, measuring and improving information quality, to understanding the implications and applications of information quality towards better and safer health services

Alimentación de un modelo de simulación mediante una conexión entre un sistema de información, R y SDLPS

Redacción del paper: alimentación de un modelo de simulación mediante una conexión entre un sistema de información, R y SDLPSEste trabajo desarrolla una metodología para alimentar de forma más automatizada un modelo de simulación. Para ello se generó un código de programación hecho con el lenguaje R que: 1) se conecta con base de datos; 2) valida los datos y 3) alimenta un modelo de simulación descrito en SDL e implementado en el software de simulación SDLPS, el cual lee la información generada en R. Este desarrollo se aplicó a un proceso de un hospital chileno. Los principales beneficios son: Es aplicable a distintas áreas y procesos; aumenta la oportunidad de la verificación y validación operacional del modelo; facilita el monitoreo del sistema en periodos más cortos y permite la experimentación más temprana de distintos escenarios para evaluar y planificar soluciones ante eventuales problemas.Preprin

Information Quality in Secondary Use of EHR Data : A Case Study of Quality Management in a Norwegian Hospital

The motivation for undertaking this study relates to my experiences from practice in a public hospital, where I have observed variations in reaching organizational goals of quality management informed by electronic health records (EHR) data. For example, while some departments and units have long-time traditions in meeting the quality goals that are set locally, regionally, or nationally, other departments and units struggle to meet the same quality goals. Thus, generating actionable information by reusing routinely collected EHR data does not necessary lead to action in response to the information. This process of generating information from existing EHR data, and communicating and using such information for organizational purposes, may be challenging in a highly complex environment such as health care organizations. Within this process, information quality (IQ) may influence actors’ perceptions of action possibilities the information offers, thus influencing the actual use of the information required to reach organizational goals. EHR data can be used for clinical purposes at the point-of-care (i.e., primary use) and reused for purposes that do not involve patient treatment directly (i.e., secondary use). Examples of such secondary use includes quality management, research, and policy development. Though it is widely accepted that IQ influences the use of EHR systems and the information generated by EHR systems, research on the implications of IQ on health care processes is limited: the focus of the current literature is concerned with defining and assessing IQ in primary use of EHR data, whereas the role of IQ in secondary use of EHR data remains unclear. Thus, this dissertation investigates the role of IQ in secondary use of EHR data in an organizational context. This dissertation addresses this practical and theoretical challenge by focusing on the overall research objective of understanding the role of IQ in secondary use of EHR data. To address this research objective, this dissertation explores the following research questions: RQ1. How do human actors influence in transformation of IQ while generating, communicating, and using information in secondary use of EHR data? RQ2. What are the underlying generative mechanisms through which IQ transforms in the process of secondary use of EHR data?publishedVersio