Determining of factors influencing the success and failure of hospital information system and their evaluation methods: A systematic review

Background: Nowadays, using new information technology (IT) has provided remarkable opportunities to decrease medical errors, support health care specialist, increase the efficiency and even the quality of patient's care and safety. Objectives: The purpose of this study was the identification of Hospital Information System (HIS) success and failure factors and the evaluation methods of these factors. This research emphasizes the need to a comprehensive evaluation of HISs which considers a wide range of success and failure factors in these systems. Materials and Methods: We searched for relevant English language studies based on keywords in title and abstract, using PubMed, Ovid Medline (by applying MeSH terms), Scopus, ScienceDirect and Embase (earliest entry to march 17, 2012). Studies which considered success models and success or failure factors, or studied the evaluation models of HISs and the related ones were chosen. Since the studies used in this systematic review were heterogeneous, the combination of extracted data was carried out by using narrative synthesis method. Results: We found 16 articles which required detailed analysis. Finally, the suggested framework includes 12 main factors (functional, organizational, behavioral, cultural, management, technical, strategy, economy, education, legal, ethical and political factors), 67 sub factors, and 33 suggested methods for the evaluation of these sub factors. Conclusions: The results of the present research indicates that the emphasis of the HIS evaluation moves from technical subjects to human and organizational subjects, and from objective to subjective issues. Therefore, this issue entails more familiarity with more qualitative evaluation methods. In most of the reviewed studies, the main focus has been laid on the necessity of using multi-method approaches and combining methods to obtain more comprehensive and useful results

Online survey software as a data collection tool for medical education: A case study on lesson plan assessment

Background: There are no general strategies or tools to evaluate daily lesson plans; however, assessments conducted using traditional methods usually include course plans. This study aimed to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of online survey software in collecting data on education in medical fields and the application of such softwares to evaluate students' views and modification of lesson plans. Methods: After investigating the available online survey software, esurveypro was selected for assessing daily lesson plans. After using the software for one semester, a questionnaire was prepared to assess the advantages and disadvantages of this method and students' views in a cross-sectional study. Results: The majority of the students (51.7) rated the evaluation of classes per session (lesson plans) using the online survey as useful or very useful. About 51 (n=36) of the students considered this method effective in improving the management of each session, 67.1 (n=47) considered it effective in improving the management of sessions for the next semester, and 51.4 (n=36) said it had a high impact on improving the educational content of subsequent sessions. Finally, 61.4 (n=43) students expressed high and very high levels of satisfaction with using an online survey at each session. Conclusion: The use of online surveys may be appropriate to improve lesson plans and educational planning at different levels. This method can be used for other evaluations and for assessing people's opinions at different levels of an educational system

The impact of management factors on the success and failure of health information systems

There are several factors that can influence the success and failure of health information systems including functional, technical, cultural, and economic factors, however one of the most important factors is the impact of management factors. This research aimed to evaluate the impact of management factors on the success and failure of health information systems in the current evidences and also provide a framework in this field. This applied study was conducted by the qualitative method. It also includes two different stages of reviewing the evidences and the implementation of the Delphi technique in order to validate the proposed model. The presented model in this study consists of 16 management factors affecting the success and the failure of health information systems. The sub-factors including user involvement, having strategy, accessibility, allocation and prioritization of the competitive resources were introduced as the most important management factors with 86.7 of "totally agree" comments due to the opinions of experts. In general the results indicated that the relationship between the management structure of health information systems and the successes and failures of these systems has been considered during the recent years. An open and multi-factorial viewpoint should be developed for the implementation of health information systems and also all factors affecting the success and failure of these systems should be considered

Nurses' information seeking behavior for clinical practice: A case study in a developing country

We used a valid questionnaire to survey Iranian nurses' seeking information behavior and their confidence on different information sources. The frequently used sources were Internet" and "personal experiences"(54.8 and 48.2 respectively). English medical journals" (61.9) and "English textbooks" (41.3) were the least frequently used sources. Nurses felt high confidence in sources such as "International instructions/guidelines" (58.6) and "English medical textbooks" (50.4). The main reasons for selecting sources were easy accessibility, being up to date and reliability. Google, Pubmed and Up to Date were the most used electronic sources. In addition, there were differences in terms of using some of these resources and nurse' age and gender. In developing information sources for nurses, factors such as reliability level, availability, and updatedness of resources should be more emphasized. © 2016 IMIA and IOS Press