Evaluation of user acceptance of information systems in health care - the value of questionnaires

The use of modern information technology (IT) offers tremendous opportunities such as reducing clinical errors and supporting health care professionals in providing care. Evaluation of user satisfaction is often seen as a surrogate for the success of an information systems. We will present the evaluation of a report writing system at the Innsbruck University Medical Center based on a standardized, validated psychometric questionnaire. The results show high reliability and validity of the questionnaire. They also show some interesting differences in user satisfaction between departments, due to differences in working processes and preconditions. Psychometric questionnaires can be seen as a reliable and valid method to measure certain psychological constructs. Their development requires, however, methodological rigour and sufficient time. Psychometric questionnaires allow only a limited interaction between researcher and user, their results may be very dependant on the time of measurement, and their interpretation often needs external knowledge. Those limitations have to be taken into account when preparing evaluation studies.