Health Information Management: Integrating Information Technology ...

Chapter 11
Evaluation of patient care information
systems
Theory and practice
Arjen Stoop, Heather Heathfield, Marleen de Mul and Marc Berg
KEY POINTS OF THIS CHAPTER
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Evaluation of PCISs is a balancing act between limited resources and
the need to focus on a wide spectrum of possible effects of the use of
the system.
Formative evaluation offers better opportunities to improve PCIS
development and use than summative evaluation.
The use of randomized clinical trials in PCIS evaluation does not lead
to suitable management information for organizational decisionmaking
about a PCIS.
Integrating qualitative and quantitative methods leads to a better
understanding of the effects of the implementation of PCISs than the
concentration on one of the two.
Textbook descriptions of ‘how one should perform an evaluation’ are
useful, but are of limited value because of the complexity of
evaluation in real-life settings.
KEY TERMS
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Randomized controlled trials
Formative and summative evaluation
Objectivist and subjectivist evaluation methods
INTRODUCTION
Evaluation of patient care information systems (PCISs) has become increasingly
important. Handling the increased complexity of health care processes, many
argue, is impossible without the use of PCISs such as electronic patient records,