Accelerating implementation of District Health Information Systems: Perspectives from healthcare workers from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Champaklal C. Jinabhai ◽  
Stanley C. Onwubu ◽  
Maureen N. Sibiya ◽  
Surendra Thakur
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Information Systems ◽  
Health Information ◽  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Health Information Systems ◽  
Healthcare Management ◽  
Quality Data ◽  
District Health ◽  
Kwazulu Natal ◽  
Electronic Health

Background: Although electronic health record systems are critical for healthcare management, there has been genuine concern about the quantity and quality of data generated by these systems inhibiting its full implementation.Objectives: The purpose of this article was to explore the experiences of healthcare workers (HCWs) and challenges facing the acceleration of the District Health Information System (DHIS) in the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province of South Africa.Methods: In this study, an interpretive research paradigm was followed to explore the current state of electronic health in South Africa from the experiences of HCWs in the KZN province. Semi-structured focus group interviews conducted with 20 participants drawn from the district office, clinical nurse practitioners and data capturers allowed thematic analysis of data using a systems approach to link the perspectives HCWs to the design of the DHIS.Results: The participants held the view that e-health is crucial for monitoring disease trends, policy development, planning and allocation of infrastructure, information technology (IT), financial and human resources. Nevertheless, the participants highlighted a concern surrounding e-health regulations, ethics and data confidentiality; data quality and lack of interoperability of Health Information Systems (HIS). This concern was attributed to data fragmentation, internal politics and lack of coordination of the data system.Conclusions: The study suggests that good quality data – from an integrated DHIS, is highly critical for the effective utilisation, implementation and acceleration of e-health systems in the province to support epidemiological surveillance and modelling of outbreaks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

scholarly journals A Provable and Secure Patient Electronic Health Record Fair Exchange Scheme for Health Information Systems

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 2401
Author(s):  
Ming-Te Chen ◽  
Tsung-Hung Lin
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Health Information ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Health Information Systems ◽  
Fair Exchange ◽  
Certification Authority ◽  
Session Key ◽  
Help Desk ◽  
Patient Will ◽  
Electronic Health

In recent years, several hospitals have begun using health information systems to maintain electronic health records (EHRs) for each patient. Traditionally, when a patient visits a new hospital for the first time, the hospital’s help desk asks them to fill in relevant personal information on a piece of paper and verifies their identity on the spot. This patient will find that many of her personal electronic records are in many hospital’s health information systems that she visited in the past, and each EHR in these hospital’s information systems cannot be accessed or shared between these hospitals. This is inconvenient because this patient will again have to provide their personal information. This is time-consuming and not practical. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a practical and provable patient EHR fair exchange scheme for each patient. In this scheme, each patient can securely delegate the information system of a current hospital to a hospital certification authority (HCA) to apply migration evidence that can be used to transfer their EHR to another hospital. The delegated system can also establish a session key with other hospital systems for later data transmission, and each patient can protect their anonymity with the help of the HCA. Additionally, we also provide formal security proofs for forward secrecy and functional comparisons with other schemes.

scholarly journals Data Incompleteness Preventing Information Communication from Hospital Information Systems to the Iranian National Electronic Health Record (SEPAS)

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Reza Abbasi ◽  
Reza Khajouei ◽  
Monireh Sadeghi Jabali ◽  
Moghadameh Mirzaei
Keyword(s):  
Information System ◽  
Information Systems ◽  
Electronic Health Record ◽  
Health Information ◽  
Information Quality ◽  
Clinical Information ◽  
Health Information Systems ◽  
Hospital Information Systems ◽  
Health Record ◽  
Electronic Health

Introduction: One of the well-known problems related to the information quality is the information incompleteness in health information systems. The purpose of this study was to investigate the completeness rate of patients’ information recorded in the hospital information system, sending information from which to Iranian electronic health record system (SEPAS) seemed to be unsuccessful.Methods: This study was conducted in six hospitals associated with Kerman University of Medical Sciences (KUMS) in Iran. In this study, 882 records which had failed to be sent from three hospital information systems to SEPAS were reviewed and the data were collected using a checklist. Data were analyzed using the descriptive and inferential statistics with SPSS.18.Results: A total of 18758 demographic and clinical information elements were examined. The rate of completeness was 55%. The highest completeness rate of demographic information was related to name, surname, gender, nationality, date of birth, father's name, marital status, place of residence, telephone number (79-100%), and in clinical information it was related to the final diagnosis (74%). The completeness rate of some information elements was significantly different among the hospitals (p <0.05). The completeness rate of information communicated to the Iranian national electronic health record was at a moderate level.Conclusion: This study showed that completeness rate is different among hospitals using the same hospital information system. The results of this study can help the health policymakers and developers of the national electronic health record in developing countries to improve completeness rate and also information quality in health information systems.

scholarly journals Health information systems in developing countries: Case of African countries

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aimé Patrice KOUMAMBA ◽  
Ulrick Jolhy BISVIGOU ◽  
Edgard Brice NGOUNGOU ◽  
Gayo DIALLO
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Information Systems ◽  
Health Information ◽  
Health Information Systems ◽  
Quality Data ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Keywords Health Information ◽  
Bibliographic Search ◽  
Technical Issues

Abstract Background: In developing countries, health information systems (HIS) is experiencing more and more difficult to produce quality data. The lack of reliable health information makes it difficult to develop effective health policies. In order to understand the organization of HIS in African countries, we undertook a literature review.Methods: Our study was conducted using the PubMed and Scopus bibliographic search engines. Our inclusion criteria were: (i) all articles published between 2005 and 2019, (ii) including in their titles the keywords "health", "information", "systems", "system", "africa", "developing countries", "santé", "pays en développement", "Afrique", (iii) written in English and French, (iv) dealing with organizational and technical issues of HIS in African countries.Results: Fourteen articles out of 2492 retrieved were included in the study, of which 13 (92.9%) were qualitative. All of them dealt with issues related to HIS in 12 African countries. All 12 countries (100.0%) had opted for a data warehouse approach to improve their HIS. This approach, supported by the DHIS2 application, had provided them with reliable data. However, 11 of the 12 countries (92.0%) were aligned with donor strategies and lacked a national strategy. Conclusion: This study helped us to understand that the lack of a national health information management strategy will always be a threat to HIS performance in African countries. Ideally, rigorous upstream thinking to strengthen HIS governance should be undertaken by defining and proposing a coherent conceptual framework to analyze and guide the development and integration of digital applications into HIS over the long term.

scholarly journals Most Influential Qualities in Creating Satisfaction Among the Users of Health Information Systems: Study in Seven European Union Countries (Preprint)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahryar Eivazzadeh ◽  
Johan S Berglund ◽  
Tobias C Larsson ◽  
Markus Fiedler ◽  
Peter Anderberg
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Information Systems ◽  
Health Information ◽  
User Satisfaction ◽  
Health Information Systems ◽  
Evaluation Framework ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Satisfaction Index ◽  
Quality Aspects ◽  
Electronic Health

BACKGROUND Several models suggest how the qualities of a product or service influence user satisfaction. Models such as the Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI), Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), and Delone and McLean Information Systems Success demonstrate those relations and have been used in the context of health information systems. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to investigate which qualities foster greater satisfaction among patient and professional users. In addition, we are interested in knowing to what extent improvement in those qualities can explain user satisfaction and whether this makes user satisfaction a proxy indicator of those qualities. METHODS The Unified eValuation using ONtology (UVON) method was used to construct an ontology of the required qualities for 7 electronic health (eHealth) apps being developed in the Future Internet Social and Technological Alignment Research (FI-STAR) project, a European Union (EU) project in electronic health (eHealth). The eHealth apps were deployed across 7 EU countries. The ontology included and unified the required qualities of those systems together with the aspects suggested by the Model for ASsessment of Telemedicine apps (MAST) evaluation framework. Moreover, 2 similar questionnaires for 87 patient users and 31 health professional users were elicited from the ontology. In the questionnaires, the user was asked if the system has improved the specified qualities and if the user was satisfied with the system. The results were analyzed using Kendall correlation coefficients matrices, incorporating the quality and satisfaction aspects. For the next step, 2 partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) path models were developed using the quality and satisfaction measure variables and the latent construct variables that were suggested by the UVON method. RESULTS Most of the quality aspects grouped by the UVON method are highly correlated. Strong correlations in each group suggest that the grouped qualities can be measures that reflect a latent quality construct. The PLS-SEM path analysis for the patients reveals that the effectiveness, safety, and efficiency of treatment provided by the system are the most influential qualities in achieving and predicting user satisfaction. For the professional users, effectiveness and affordability are the most influential. The parameters of the PLS-SEM that are calculated allow for the measurement of a user satisfaction index similar to CSI for similar health information systems. CONCLUSIONS For both patients and professionals, the effectiveness of systems highly contributes to their satisfaction. Patients care about improvements in safety and efficiency, whereas professionals care about improvements in the affordability of treatments with health information systems. User satisfaction is reflected more in the users’ evaluation of system output and fulfillment of expectations but slightly less in how far the system is from ideal. Investigating satisfaction scores can be a simple and fast way to infer if the system has improved the abovementioned qualities in treatment and care.

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