User requirement analysis: online thalassemia management system for Hospital Sultanah Aminah, Malaysia

Abstract

The care process of patients suffering from thalassemia involves continuous and complex care procedures, which produce a large volume of diverse data. This makes the management of the patient records using paper-based system cumbersome. Information technology (IT) is an essential factor in the administration of healthcare where it can improves health care quality and service. Besides that, it provides more accurate and timely information regarding patient care. Consequently, the adoption of IT tools such as Electronic Medical Records (EMR) in hospitals is a solution to reduce some barriers in the healthcare services. This solution may improve the effectiveness of chronic disease management such as thalassemia, since a lot of the patient’s data will be stored and retrieved due to the frequent monitoring and treatment. In order to facilitate successful adoption of an EMR, involvement of end-users would be essentially required during the designing, implementation and usage phase. In this study, an EMR specifically design for thalassemia patient management is proposed to be implemented in Hospital Sultanah Aminah, Johor, Malaysia. The user requirement analysis (URA) of the proposed system, Online Thalassemia Management System (OTMS), is investigated and discussed in this article.