The use of data sources of medication information - A finnish primary care organization in the light of national e-health scenarios

Abstract

Many areas of the healthcare sector are information-rich and data-intensive, and often lack of time is a problem. Patient-specific medication information is often seen as highly important part of patient data for patient's safe treatment and therefore the availability of it should be guaranteed. The aim of this paper is to study healthcare professional's perceptions of their utilization of sources of medication information and to assess it in the light of national e-Health scenarios using a Finnish primary care organization as a case study. The healthcare professionals reported frequent use of the patient as a source of information as they could not be convinced of the correctness of the medication lists in the electronic patient record. The future e-Health solutions should be usable and guarantee the correctness and completeness of the medication information if the clinical workers are expected to use them. The valuable information provided by the patients could be also exploited more efficiently in the future. © 2008 International Federation for Information Processing.