Author:
Ghadah Khojah
Affiliation:
Salford University, United Kingdom
Keyword(s):
Electronic Medical Records, Dooyeweerds’ Aspects, Down-To-Earth Issues Approach.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Biomedical Engineering
;
Electronic Health Records and Standards
;
Health Information Systems
;
Software Systems in Medicine
Abstract:
Electronic medical records (EMR) offer much potential. However, various problems have made the widespread use of EMR an unachieved reality (West and Blake, 2009). The problems reached such levels that in some countries, the transition from paper to electronic version has slowed down, if not stopped. For example, the U.K. NHS abandoned some of its ambitious plans for full transition from paper to electronic medical records (Daily Mail, 2011 Aug 03). In other countries, like Saudi Arabia, some started questioning the wisdom of electronic systems, and seek new methods of implementations, that do away from the previous mistakes. To address these issues, one needs to discover what went wrong. The myriads of issues involved, is proving rather complex, needing a sophisticated approach to expose them. Ahmad (2012) has explored an approach called Down-To-Earth (DTE) which provides a rich picture of information systems (IS) use. This paper adopts Ahmad approach to gain a richer picture of medi
cal records. The DTE approach is based on what is called Dooyeweerd's aspects, which is a set of distinct ways in which things like medical records function and are meaningful. The main aim of this paper is to explore the potential of the Down To Earth approach with Dooyeweerd's aspects as a way to better understanding health-care giver behaviour with medical records, as a prelude to discussing how to effect more appropriate transition to EMR. By health-care giver we include: physician, nurse, technician and administration.
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