Electronic Health Records (EHR) and the patient’s empowerment

: healthcare management

Abstract

Healthcare systems will face obstacles in the near future to serve patients demands due to a mismatch in the supply of healthcare services. In order to tackle this problem, it will be important to connect the various sources of health information. The introduction of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) is one step towards a more automated healthcare management system. It enables the physicians to easily store, access, analyse and share information. By granting patients online access to their medical records, a new system evolved. Patient Portals offer secure, web-based patient-provider communication services. Since the Patient Portal is a recent technological innovation, little research has been done until now. This dissertation would like to address the problem, whether the healthcare market is ready for the enrolment of Patient Portals. In order to solve the problem statement, the major success and risk attributes are identified and discussed. A primary and secondary research was conducted to identify these attributes. The primary research involved a survey, which asked healthcare professionals to rate preselected success and risk attributes, according to their perceived importance. The findings of the secondary research result from already existing literature. After comparing the results from each source, it is noticeable that a clear answer is hard to provide, since physicians and patients prefer different features and see different obstacles. Referring to the success attributes, scheduling appointments is a major aspect for physicians and patients. Referring to the risk attributes, the loss of personal interaction will be a key obstacle to overcome.

Date of Award	30 Oct 2015
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Susana Frazão Ferreira Fernandes Pinheiro (Supervisor)