Ranking the macro-level critical success factors of electronic medical record adoption using fuzzy AHP method

Abstract

Electronic Medical Record (EMR) has been introduced into healthcare organizations in order to incorporate better use of technology, to aid decision making and to facilitate searching for a medical solution. The EMR is an Information Technology (IT) tool supporting the examination, treatment and care of patients. Low adoption of the EMR persists despite the obvious benefits of centralized medical record management. The rate of EMR implementation among physician practices has been slow and limited. This needs those professionals in healthcare organizations to be in the process of changing from the use of paper to maintain medical records into computerized medical record keeping opportunities. The critical users are physicians, which play an important role in success of Health Information Technology (HIT) including EMR. Hence, study regarding individual level of adoption in EMR should be done to understand more about this issue. Hence, the objective of this paper is to finding out the imperative factors in affecting EMR adoption. The macro-level framework evaluated based on Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (F-AHP). Basically, surveys distributed to physicians who has experienced with using EMR technology in three Malaysian public hospitals. Findings showed the most important factors and sub-factors in macro-level context related to adoption of EMR. The results of F-AHP showed that the most important factors are Socio-pol-economic trends and HIS standards and the most important sub-factors are economic trends, standardized data, and political trends.