Exploratory Study of E – Services Introduction in Health Industry

Abstract

Health industry nowadays is experiencing fast growing of various electronic services introduction and wide usage of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for health care quality improvement. A number of studies show increasing interest and necessity for various e-solutions introduction in health industry, such as mobile-health (m-health), e-health, telemedicine etc. (Al Basheer Al Morshid S, Healy J. C, et al.). In Latvia similar process is occurring showing that e-health processes and services implementation is one of the most important issues at the vast majority of hospitals and health care institutions in the Republic of Latvia. The authors of the given research paper have analysed the situation in relevant hospital in Y2014, conducted the survey amongst medical personnel and gathered data set for assessment the satisfaction of ICT level by physicians and patients, which could essentially implicate the success of e-service project introduction. Interpretation of data allowed carry out several recommendations that could be valuable for similar health care institution management while introducing e-health services or another kind of manual operation automation at medical institution.

Objective: according to research goal the authors formulated the hypothesis that introducing of various e-health services at medical institution may substantially increase the satisfaction of the offered services by hospital’ patients and increase the quality of medical care.

Design/methodology/approaches: critical analysis of literature sources, quantitative analysis and interpretation of the data gathered by the survey from the Children’s Clinical University Hospital’ doctors, semi-structured interviews and discussions with the top medical personnel of two biggest hospitals in Latvia.

Practical implications: The research could impact the behaviour of medical institutions’ top management and stakeholders for better governing and managing e-health services introduction for medical care quality improvement.