National health Information Management/Information Technology priorities: an international comparative study
Date
2005-10-07T21:23:37Z
Authors
Sandhu, Neelam
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Abstract
This thesis research contributes to national health Information Management/Information
Technology (IM/IT) planning and therefore strategy development and implementation
research, as well as to health information science. An examination into the national
health IM/IT plans of several countries provides knowledge into identifying the typical
IM/IT priorities that selected countries are focusing upon for healthcare improvement.
Second, a systematic literature review of the current challenges, barriers and/or issues
(referred to as ‘challenges’ hereafter) facing IM/IT priority implementation in healthcare
settings provides insight on where nations should perhaps be focusing their attention, in
order to enable more successful healthcare IM/IT implementations. Lastly, a study on
national health IM/IT priorities contributes to the body of evidence that national level
IM/IT direction is necessary for better patient care and health system reform across the
world.
In this investigation, the national health IM/IT priorities, which are reflected in the
national health IM/IT strategic plans of five countries were assessed. To this end, the
study: 1) Developed a set of measures to select four countries to study in addition to
Canada; 2) Described the national health IM/IT priorities of Canada and four other
countries; 3) Performed a systematic literature review of the challenges to overcome for
successful implementation of IM/IT into healthcare settings; 4) Developed and
administered a questionnaire where participants were asked to give their opinions on the
progress their country has achieved in dealing with such challenges; and 5) Performed an
analysis of the questionnaire results with respect to the countries’ national health IM/IT
priorities.
The systematic literature review uncovered a large number of challenges that the health
informatics and healthcare community face when attempting to implement IM/IT into
healthcare settings.
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The priority comparison highlighted that there is no right or wrong answer for what
countries should focus their national health IM/IT energies upon. The findings indicate
that nations focus their resources (time, money, personnel etc.) on the priorities they feel
they should, whether those stem from needs analyses or politics. However, by learning
about what other nations are prioritizing, a country can use that knowledge to help focus
their own national health IM/IT priorities.
The questionnaire results drew attention to the most frequently encountered challenges
the five countries face in moving their national health IM/IT agendas forward. The
feedback from the respondents provided individual reflections on how IM/IT
implementations are actually progressing in their country, where problems are being
encountered, including the nature of those problems, and in some cases, respondents
offered insight on how to better deal with the challenges they face. The findings indicate
that nations encounter similar problems in implementing IM/IT into healthcare settings.
Currently, the world is facing many of the same healthcare system issues: shortages of
healthcare processionals, long surgical and diagnostic imaging waitlists, ‘skyrocketing’
pharmaceutical drug pricing, healthcare funding practices, and challenges with
implementing healthcare IM/IT priorities to name a few. If countries are facing similar
health system problems, then it would be logical to assume that solutions to deal with
such problems would be similar across nations.
Thus, it is recommended that international fora and conferences be held to further discuss
the types of health system IM/IT priorities that countries are implementing at a nation
scale, the kinds of challenges they face and the solutions or conclusions that they have
formulated in response to these challenges.
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Keywords
national health information technology, national health information management, international comparative analysis, national health priorities, healthcare, health information science