Health information technology in ambulatory care in a developing country

Background Physicians need to apply new technologies in ambulatory care. At present, with regard to the extended use of information technology in other departments in Iran it has yet to be considerably developed by physicians and clinical technicians in the health department. Objective To determine the rate of use of health information technology in the clinics of specialist- and subspecialist physicians in Semnan city, Iran. Methods This was a 2016 cross-sectional study conducted in physicians' offices of Semnan city in Iran. All physicians' offices in Semnan (130) were studied in this research. A researcher made and Likert-type questionnaire was designed, and consisted of two sections: the first section included demographic items and the second section consisted of four subscales (telemedicine, patient's safety, electronic patient record, and electronic communications). In order to determine the validity, the primary questionnaire was reviewed by one medical informatics- and two health information management experts from Semnan University of Medical Sciences. Utilizing the experts' suggestions, the questionnaire was rewritten and became more focused. Then the questionnaire was piloted on forty participants, randomly selected from different physicians' offices. Participants in the pilot study were excluded from the study. Cronbach's alpha was used to calculate the reliability of the instruments. Finally, SPSS version 16 was used to conduct descriptive and inferential statistics. Results The minimum mean related to the physicians' use of E-mail services for the purpose of communicating with the patients, the physicians' use of computer-aided diagnostics to diagnose the patients' illnesses, and the level of the physicians' access to the electronic medical record of patients in the other treatment centers were 2.01, 3.58, and 1.43 respectively. The maximum mean score was related to the physicians' use of social networks to communicate with other physicians (3.64). The study showed that the physicians used less computerized systems in their clinic for the purpose of managing their patients' safety and there was a significant difference between the mean of the scores (p<0.001). Conclusion The results showed that the physicians used some aspects of health information technology for the reduction of medical risks and increase of the patient's safety, by collecting the medical data of patients and the rapid and apropos recovering of them for adaptation of clinical decisions.