The term denotes the processes via which clinical decisions are made in order to improve patient health. The processes include diagnosis (specification of disease by linking symptoms with causes of disease), therapy planning (actions targeted to alleviate the causes of disease), monitoring (actions that are targeted to steer patient status on a healthy course) and prevention (actions that are targeted to support maintenance of healthy status).
Published in Chapter:
Organizational Implementation of Healthcare Information Systems
G. Charissis (University of Crete, Greece), C. Melas (University Hospital of Crete, Greece), V. Moustakis (Technological Educational Institute of Crete, Greece), and L. Zampetakis (Technical University of Crete, Greece)
Copyright: © 2010
|Pages: 32
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-670-4.ch020
Abstract
Health-care information systems (HCIS) intervene in medical reasoning and function. In a continuously changing environment health-care professionals find themselves overwhelmed with fast pacing advances both in information technology (IT) and in medical practice. Use of evidence-based medicine (EBM) is flourishing and the coupling between HCIS and EBM opens new frontiers for both. Yet the problems that relate to HCIS development and implementation remain the same. The problems of today have been problems of yesterday and are likely to stay, or evolve, in the future. The chapter takes the reader to a journey around the factors that are involved in HCIS development and implementation. Discussion is mostly non-technical and focuses on organization and individual readiness to adopt HCIS technology in the workplace. Discussion formalizes to a concrete framework, which is accompanied by a formal statistical methodology on how to apply the framework in practice. The proposed framework integrates existing formal models related to technology readiness and acceptance, EBM, organization climate and computer knowledge and skills.