Special Issue Editorial

Abstract

Information Management', and was developed to encourage researchers and practitioners working with ICTs in the health sector to consider the overlap between health informatics and health information management [1]. An important feature of the ISHIMR conferences is the opportunity for all delegates to participate in discussion on issues of interest in the conference sessions, as well as in the intervals and social sessions. This special issue contains eight of the best papers from the conference, as reviewed by the ISHIMR Programme Committee.The papers were selected for their high quality and present an interesting cross-section of articles not only on developments within health informatics and health information management, but also on how these can contribute to change in the healthcare sector. The selected papers are from a range of countries, and also document research collaborations across countries. Two themes emerge from these papers: the importance of user-centred design in developing information systems, and the need to consider the views and rights of users when developing strategies for the implementation of ICTs in health.The fi rst paper, by Rabiei et al. [2], describes a qualitative study evaluating the impact of the Choose and Book system that has been developed under the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) in the UK. The Choose and Book system is an example of how ICTs can facilitate patients' access to healthcare services, improve patient choice and, hopefully, improve patient health and wellbeing. The paper identifi es the need to ensure new information systems have benefi ts for clinical staff and do not increase their workload, and emphasizes 164 ••••• Health Informatics Journal 15 (3)the importance of taking into account the views of healthcare professionals in developing new systems. The second paper, by Viitanen [3], was awarded the ISHIMR 2009 Best Student Paper award, and describes another qualitative study examining clinicians' perspectives, this time on the use of typing, cassette dictation, digital dictation and voice-recognition dictation for clinical documentation in a hospital in Finland. The paper identifi es specifi c user requirements for dictation, provides an evaluation of the dictation procedures in use and emphasizes the need to use user-centred methodologies in developing information systems in healthcare.Two papers [4, 5] compare the use of paper-based and electronic-based health records by staff in two quite different hospital settings. Raptis et al. [4] report a quantitative study to compare the quality of information transfer in paper-based and electronic-based medical handover in an acute care tertiary hospital. The study showed that using electronic records can ensure that complete patient information is transferred during handover and that information is instantly accessible via computers connected to the hospital intranet. Raptis was awarded the Best Paper award for ISHIMR 2009 for his work. Ayatollahi et al.[5] describe a study to compare the perspectives of healthc...

Beyond 50. challenges at work for older nurses and allied health workers in rural Australia: a thematic analysis of focus group discussions

“…Difficulties working with computers were commonly reported, supporting findings elsewhere [28,29], including the sense that computerised systems did not necessarily reduce documentation time [30]. Participants were keen to participate in computer education courses, given attention to more appropriate, adult learning styles - a finding also supported by other studies [5,12].…”