The impact of advanced e-clinical systems and IT-based technologies on medical practice at Saudi tertiary hospitals

Abstract

Studying the impact of advanced IT-based technologies and E-clinical systems on healthcare service is currently active area of research. This study main objective is to evaluate the medical staff proficiency and implementation of IT based technologies and instrumentation in medical research, education and clinical practice at Saudi General Tertiary Hospitals. The study was carried out at King Saud Medical City (KSMC) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The research main data was collected predominantly using a cross-sectional survey questionnaire. The research results showed that an average overall rate of 61.68% of the participants' usage (sometimes, often, or always) of IT based technologies in clinical tasks. When comparing various clinical tasks, the highest average rate for IT usage was for continuing medical education task (65.9%). The lowest average rate for IT clinical task usage was for teaching interim resident (34.1%). With respect to adoption of IT for enhancing medical knowledge & education, the most used E-resource, was research databases and On line journals (40.4% reported using it), and the leased used was Virtual Reality and Simulations (17%). A relatively high percentage of participants (50.28% reported that all the survey questioned medical E-resources are unavailable to them in their work settings). For most adapted E-clinical systems, KSMC participants selected the CPOE system (53.2 % claimed using it often and always), while the least E-clinical system used was the LIMS system (19.1 %). Main results from this research showed that IT based technologies diffusion at King Saud medical city is very comparable to similar institutions in advanced countries. Furthermore, more advanced IT medical education resources (such as virtual reality systems, Web based multimedia …etc.) are needed to overcome its limited availability, and to increase the diffusion of IT technologies in medical knowledge, education and daily practice.