Investigation of performance criteria for health information systems

Abstract

Expenditures of health care are increasing in every country and studies about health care expenditures predict that this trend will not end very soon. The greatest proportion of health care investment made is health information systems (HIS). It is obvious that performance measurement criteria are needed to trace the improvement in this area. In this study, it is aimed to develop performance measurement criteria for organization-wide HIS. In the first step of the study literature survey is conducted to understand the requirements of health care industry, the evolution of HIS, current usage area of information systems in health care industry and its promises. The literature survey is also performed to find out the ways to evaluate performance of different technologies, especially information systems. In the next step in-depth interviews are conducted with IT experts in health care organizations and health care staff. New perspectives and their experiences with information systems are scrutinized. In the last step, HIS usages are classified according to operational levels such as clinical HIS, administrative HIS, and strategic HIS. Performance criteria of these three classes of HIS are derived. The financial criteria are extracted from the study to focus on HIS specific criteria.