Title:	ELECTRONIC PATIENT RECORD (EPR) SYSTEM IN SOUTH AFRICA: CONTINUING THE DEBATE
Author(s):	Temitope Oluwaseyi Tokosi, Visvanathan Naicker
ISBN:	978-989-8533-33-3
Editors:	Miguel Baptista Nunes, Pedro Isaías and Philip Powell
Year:	2015
Edition:	Single
Keywords:	Clinicians, EPR, Healthcare, HIS, South Africa.
Type:	Doctoral Paper
First Page:	269
Last Page:	272
Language:	English
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Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	Patient record digitalisation in healthcare has been understudied in South Africa (SA), especially in relation to the presumed reductions in healthcare costs through errors. Clinicians have somewhat expressed concerns that having medical records on a central electronic database represents a privacy concerns which the SA Government will hopefully address. The objective of this paper investigates a general debate into the use of ICT tools in the SA healthcare sector with specific focus on Electronic Patient Record (EPR). A qualitative approach involving literature search from 2005-2014 is undertaken to identify the SA topics being discussed. Case studies of specific EPR topics in SA are undertaken to explore research gap. Document analysis of secondary data is used. Conclusions indicate that EPRs are relatively unknown in SA by the public but debates by researchers are improving. An 11.2% SA study representation attests to an increase in academic research into e-health although EPR studies are still few while reasons for this is not clearly known. It is assumed that there is lack of interest by academia, prior implementation failures and so lack of reporting, or the challenges associated with EPR research.
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