Health Information Management: Integrating Information Technology ...

STRATEGY, IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION 217
addition, the steps are equally useful as a framework to guide one’s own work. Yet
the overriding requirement in the practice of designing and doing an evaluation,
as in designing and ‘doing’ a PCIS, is the concrete balancing act between limited
resources, ever changing and multidimensional aims, and the changing
environment within which any project takes place.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1 What are the differences between the starting points of evaluation
from a RCT perspective compared to the sociotechnical perspective?
2 What are the strengths of qualitative and quantitative methods and
what is the additional value of integrating them?
3 When you were to evaluate a PCIS implementation you know of,
how would you proceed through steps 1–6?
REFERENCES
Heathfield, H., P.Hudson, S.Kay, L.Mackay, T.Marley, L.Nicholson, V.Peel, R.Roberts
and J.Williams (1999) Issues into multi-disciplinary assessment of healthcare
information systems, Information Technology & People 12(3): 253–75.
Heathfield, H., S.Clamp and D.Felton (2001) Probe: Project Review and Objective
Evaluation for Electronic Patient and Health Record Projects. UK Institute of
Health Informatics for the NHS Information Authority.
Kaplan, B. (2001) Evaluating informatics applications—clinical decision support systems
literature review, International Journal of Medical Informatics 64:15–37.
Stoop, A.P. and M.Berg (2003) Integrating quantitative and qualitative methods in patient
care information system evaluation: guidance for the organizational decision maker,
Methods of Information in Medicine 42 (in press).
FURTHER READING
On methods of evaluation in (informatics in) health care
Anderson, J., C.Aydin and S.Jay (eds) (1994) Evaluating Health Care Information Systems.
California: SAGE Publications.
Friedman C.P. and J.C.Wyatt (1997) Evaluation Methods in Medical Informatics. New
York: Springer-Verlag.
Kaplan, B. and N.T.Shaw (2002) People, organizational, and social issues: evaluation as
an exemplar, Yearbook of Medical Informatics 91–102.
Øvretveit, J. (1998) Evaluating Health Interventions. Buckingham: Open University
Press.
Pope, C. (1995) Qualitative research: reaching the parts other methods cannot reach: an
introduction to qualitative methods in health and health services research, British
Medical Journal 311:42–5.