Title:

“National policies for EHR Implementation in the European area:
social and organizational issues”

Acronym:

EHR-IMPLEMENT

General Objective

The general objective of EHR-IMPLEMENT is to collect, analyze and compare broad scale electronic health record (EHR) implementations among European countries and provide best practice, policy and strategic recommendations to facilitate EHR implementation initiatives throughout Europe. EHR implementations at the level of the population are challenging both technologically as well as politically and organizationally. Previous experiences, however, have shown that EHR projects place significant emphasis on technological aspects, while social and organizational aspects are either overlooked or difficult to apprehend. Nevertheless, it has been widely recognized that social and organizational aspects are as likely to ruin an implementation process as technical factors are. While information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in health and EHR implementations have started to become a political issue in several Member States, the EHR-IMPLEMENT aims to address the political, social, and organizational dimensions of EHR implementation in broad scale national initiatives throughout Europe.

The project will use 1) a case study approach to analyze and compare six national initiatives identifying best practices and success factors and 2) a focused survey at the European level. Overall the project aims to elaborate recommendations based on best practices for policy makers to facilitate the introduction of EHR in Member States.

The main strategic objectives of the project include:

1. In depth analysis of selected national policies and strategies for EHR implementation taking into account cultural and organizational diversities of health systems in six European Member states (Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Slovenia and UK).
2. Conducting a survey of policy and action plans for National EHR implementation across European Member States.
3. Investigation of the role of EHR users including citizens and health care personnel in implementation efforts.
4. Identification of best practices towards broad EHR implementations in European countries.
5. Raising the awareness of decision and policy makers towards sociocultural and organizational issues of EHR implementation.
6. Supporting the creation of a multidisciplinary community of scientific experts, technical personnel and National Health System representatives to promote information sharing and mutual learning.
7. Disseminating the results of the project and the recommendations among stakeholders of the European area.

Participants:

Website: www.ehr-implement.eu