A Survey on Barriers to the Development and Adoption of Electronic Health Records in Iran

The development and the adoption of electronic health records may face a number of barriers. These barriers can be classified as technical، organizational، individual، financial and ethico-legal. This study aimed at determining the importance of each of the mentioned barriers in the development and adoption of the electronic health records from the perspectives of the experts in the Ministry of Health. This was a descriptive applied research completed in 2011. The study population were constituted the faculty members working in of the departments of health information technology، health information management، and medical informatics، and as well as those who were in charge of the development and adoption of the electronic health records in the Ministry of Health and Medical Education. In this study، no No sampling method was used due to the limited number of the study population. Data were collected using a Likert scale questionnaire and were analysed by means of descriptive statistics. The content and face validity of the questionnaire were established and the reliability was calculated using Cronbach’s alpha. In total، 32 participants (51. 6%) completed the questionnaire. The participants'' perspectives showed that the most important barriers in the development and adoption of electronic health records were the technical barriers (mean=71. 00). The financial barriers and the ethico-legal barriers with the mean values of 70. 05 and 68. 16 were in the second and third place، respectively. The individual and organisational barriers with the mean values of 64. 84 and 62. 67 were in the fourth and fifth places. It seems that employing a team of experts in different areas related to the development and adoption of EHR، training users، and addressing technical concerns along with allocating financial resources can help overcome barriers to the adoption of EHR.