Assessing the viewpoint of faculty members of medical record departments in Iran about the impact of Information Technology on health system 2004

Background: Understanding the potential impact of information technology on health system can be used as a basis for health promotion based on information technology (IT). Undoubtedly, faculty members of medical record departments in Iranian medical universities have a significant role in knowledge gain of college students about the effectiveness of information technology on health system. Methods: In order to assess the impact of IT on health system in the viewpoint of faculty members of medical record departments in Iranian medical universities, a cross sectional survey was conducted and questionnaires were sent to 17 universities with medical records departments. The questionnaire had three sections: The effect of IT on health information management (including: quantitative and qualitative promotion of documentations, follow up and referral, demand management and income and cost system), medical research and medical education. To investigate the correlations between variables of the study, X2 and exact fisher tests were used. Result: From 64 distributed questionnaires, a total of 49 were completed. The majority of faculty members (%40.81) believed that the use of IT enhances the utilization of paper documents. %26.53 believed that the use of IT has high impact on increase of medical errors. The majority of members (%36.75) considered IT to have a medium impact on self-therapy. The impact of information technology on medical research and medical education was believed to be very high by 83.67% and 79.59% of respondents, respectively. We did not find any correlation between the impact of IT on the studied variables and demographic data of participants such as age, gender and the years of teaching. Discussion: Most of faculty members of medical record departments have a high knowledge about the impact of IT on promotion of the management of health, research and education in medical sciences, but their knowledge about effectiveness of IT on quality of health services and its adverse effect was not proper. Therefore, the knowledge of faculty members of medical record departments in Iranian medical universities about the impact of IT on the quality of health services should be increased by educational programs.