Quantitative and Qualitative Methods: Added Value in Evaluating Electronic Patient Records

Contrary to what would be expected, the increasing application of patient care information systems hardly resulted in well-defined, methodical purchase or development and implementation trajectories. Together with the lack of thorough evaluations in daily practice, this was an important motivation to the development, implementation and evaluation of the studied electronic patient record. It is a problem that both successful and failed electronic patient record projects are seldom evaluated. This is a problem, because failures and successes can provide relevant information about system qualities, system requirements, important aspects of implementations, and so forth. A second problem is that the methods to evaluate are not yet fully developed as well as the content of evaluations. Clearly, this impedes evaluation practices. To contribute to solutions for IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING This chapter appears in the book, E-Health Systems Diffusion and Use: The Innovation, the User and the USE IT Model edited by Ton A.M. Spil and Roel W. Schuring © 2005, Idea Group Inc. 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Suite 200, Hershey PA 17033-1240, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com ITB11519