Economic Evaluation of Hospital Information Systems In Iran: A Systematic Review

Evaluation of hospital information systems (HIS) are payed attention in different aspects such as educational, clinical, research and financial but among these, financial and economic impact of these systems on healthcare organizations is one of the most important concerns of managers. This study is a systematic review to identify the effect of hospital information systems in decreasing cost and increasing effectiveness according to available evidence in Iran. At the first stage the specific keywords of health information systems were searched in Iranian databases such as Magiran, Iranmedex, SID, Medlib, and Irandoc. Then the studies were found and those related to the topic were selected. At the end, the studies was appraised using Critical Appraisal Skill Program (CASP) checklist. Among 1197 article, 36 article about hospital information systems evaluation were selected. About 50% of these article were conducted by using questionnaire and 30% of them have evaluated hospital information systems by observation, interview or qualitative methods. Although these studies answer whether the systems are or are not cost effectiveness but their answer is based on people’s viewpoint and just two articles found cost and effectiveness of HIS with accountable criteria. After quality assessment, none of articles matched the pattern of economic evaluation. Despite of Persian articles, there is not any good evidence to judge about cost effectiveness of HIS. Although these articles express some hypothesis about cost effectiveness of HIS but it is necessary to prove this claim through exact and scientific ways. because of managers’ need to know about the quality of HISs in organizations and the necessity of using guidelines, perhaps there is a good suggestion that related institutions try to develop guidelines and standards to facilitate these types of studies.