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Volume 8 Issue 3 December 2005
Conducting Inter-Disciplinary Research: Evaluation of the ePrescription Piloting in Finland
Hannele Hypponen1, Pirkko Nykänen2, Lauri Salmivalli3, Marja Pajukoski1, Pekka Ruotsalainen1 and Suvi Vuorela2
1National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health, 2 Department of Computer Sciences, Tampere University, 3Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, Finland |
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Social and health care is an important player in the welfare societies with big impacts on the national economy. Demographic ageing, development of new medical technologies and demand for health care have increased the costs. Polypharmacy, medication errors and fraud have increased. Many countries have turned to information technology as one solution for these problems. (Boonstra 2003; Mundy and Chadwick 2002; Sugden and Wilson 2003; Bastholm et al 2004.). Expectations from information technology have reached from provision of health-related information services and decision support to managing rising costs, changing organizational needs, improving the quality of health services and patient care.
Yet, there are some obstacles in the implementation and utilization of IT in health care: information systems are costly, and their failures can cause negative consequences on patients and health care personnel (Ammenwerth, Gräber et al. 2003). A thorough evaluation of change in services and technologies has a major importance for the users and decision makers in the health care field. However, traditional evaluation approaches have not been capable of capturing the entity of co-development of new technologies and the practices for which the technologies are developed (Orlikowski 1991; Hyppönen 2004 c.f. Brender 1999).
The purpose of this study is to describe the use of a multidisciplinary framework for evaluation of the national ePrescription system in Finland. The theoretical foundations of the framework are depicted in detail in another article by the authors (submitted). The framework was used to structure the evaluation study of 1) the contextual determinants and needs posed by organisational, functional, technical and normative aspects of the Finnish prescription system, 2) construction and implementation of the e-prescription system and 3) the impacts of the implementation from technical, organisational, social and juridical points of view.
The article will elaborate on the use of the multi-scientific approach and results of the evaluation and discuss the challenges, possibilities and limitations of this type of evaluation. The basis for the article was laid in a presentation in the European Conference for Information Technology Evaluation held in Turku, Finland in September 2005 (Hyppönen et al 2005b).
Keywords: Evaluation, e-Prescription, Interdisciplinary research
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