Practice management software usage type across developing countries

Both private and government physicians are now requiring more support for their practice activities. In developing countries, various types of medical software had been employed by private physicians to address their practice challenges. But for their successful scalability, what is required is better sustainable sources of funding, greater support for the adoption of new technologies and better ways of evaluating impact as found in developed countries. Hardware intrinsic security (HIS) technology has been developed in developing countries more for transactional purposes on mini and mainframe platforms. The recent HIS technology have the advantage of PC technology, client-server models and telecommunications to achieve integration. In the absence of governmental version of primary care software in many developing countries, there is a tendency of family physicians using too many software with different quality, which are often not compatible with each other.Some of the most popular examples of medical PMS available in developing countries are Care2X, OpenEMR, MirrorMed, Open Dental, and Technology Assisted Practice Application Suite. Our systematic-review of 57 studies found that a wide variety of PMS and EMR systems are used in developing countries; with their overall effects although not so excellent, but the trends were on positive side on the practice of physicians.

 

Key examples of successful practice management software implementation

 

Studies in literature reveal many types of PMS system in developing countries spanning eastern to the western part of the globe as seen from studies considered in our systematic-review.

On Clinical practice analysis data; study of Hamadeh found that, there was a good impact of automation on patient care, missing medical records, appointment scheduling, referral rates, and repeat prescriptions after using such technology.

Study of Ferrara had also found that; an open architecture (based on the introduction of a middleware of common health care-specific services) can not only reduce the effort necessary for allowing existing systems to interwork, but also it established a functional and information basis for the whole health organization

Study by Higashi et al. in the area of hospital-based cancer registry in Japan by applying medical software found that this type of database can not only provide an infrastructure for future clinical and health services research, but also it can support quality measurement and improvement of cancer care

Study of Nitsuwat and Paoin in Thailand had found that International Classification of Diseases-10 (ICD-10) ontology in the ICD coding software can facilitate successful implementation of ICD in developing countries without any adequate number of competent ICD coders[

Qualitative study of Some et al. on women's perceptions of home births in two medical districts of Burkina Faso using QSR International (A qualitative research software developer based in Melbourne, Australia, with offices in the United Kingdom, the United States and Japan), qualitative data management software for managing their interviews were positive

In their study of a generic personal digital assistant (PDA)-based data collection software-eSTEP by Yu et al. it was found that this software directly interfaced with EpiData and also it significantly reduced errors in data entry. This eSTEPS field trial proved that, PDA was more efficient than paper for public health survey data collection

Study of Marchal and Kegels on HRM software found that they could identify conditions for successful high commitment management of health service managers; appropriate decision spaces for healthcare managers and a pool of reasonable well-trained health workers for hospital sector after using this technology

Study of Ali et al. had found that Information from the model data management structure software helped others to construct reliable databases for large-scale epidemiological studies in less developed countries

The study of Hovenga has found that the nursing profession must develop its domain knowledge constraint models (archetypes open EHR) collaboratively in an international context

Study of Hussain et al. found after using SPSS software in his study that; a significant number of doctors were not aware that obstructive sleep apnea could occur in nonobese individuals (33%), women (42%), and children (39%)

Study of Maimbolwa et al. used EPI INFO, an epidemiological statistical software package, to analyze the quantitative data and they found that midwives had an opportunity to ensure that care given during childbirth is clinically safe and culturally sensitive

Study of Liu and Liu on usage of geographic information systems based software had shown that this kind of approach had practical significance to flood fighting and control in developing countries like China

Improved technology of computer hardware and software coupled with less cost and better access to this technology is now establishing telemedicine as an acceptable standard practice as found in the study of Kurec, creating a good scope of PMS

Study of Niinimäki and Forsström found that voluntary evaluation practice can be an invaluable source of information in terms of developing new software in medical e-prescribing

Automated computer-software-assisted Pap test ability to reduce human resource costs and its adoption in a model using only biologists and pathologists for screening was found to be more economically advantageous as found in the study of Della Palma et al

The study by Liu et al. found that standardized wound information management by standardized techniques of acquisition, transmission, and storage of wound information after using wound Clinic Management Software can be used widely in hospitals, primary medical institutions, surgical clinics of China

Study by Pawlik et al. revealed that only few commercial software met the needs of an acute pain service, hence they developed and implemented a program-Schmerzvisite, Medlinq, Hamburg, Germany in the acute pain service of a University Hospital with positive results

In the study of Rubegni et al. (2009) they designed a reliable hardware structure for future scaling. This software facilitated the classification by pathology, patient and visit, with an advanced search option allowing access to all images and the possibility of comparing two or more digital images

A study in Oman which evaluated physician satisfaction with the EMR system, found both positive impact in areas of communication, data entry and retrieval, patient care, and reduction of medical errors as well as negative aspects, such as loss of confidentiality of information and software-related problems, which needs to be solved for their better applicability.

[ Source : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4408703/ ]