The challenges of implementing packaged hospital electronic prescribing and medicine administration systems in UK hospitals: premature purchase of immature solutions?

Mozaffar, Hajar; Williams, Robin; Cresswell, Kathrin M.; Pollock, Neil; Morrison, Zoe; Sheikh, Aziz

Abstract

The UK National Health Service is making major efforts to implement Hospital Electronic Prescribing and Medicine Administration (HEPMA) to improve patient safety and quality of care. Substantial public investments have attracted a wide range of UK and overseas suppliers offering Commercial-Off –The-Shelf (COTS) solutions. A lack of (UK) implementation experience and weak supplier-user relationships are reflected in systems with limited configurability, poorly matched to the needs and practices of English hospitals. This situation echoes the history of comparable corporate information infrastructures - Enterprise Resource Planning systems - in the 1980s/1990s. UK government intervention prompted a similar swarming of immature, often unfinished, products into the market. This resulted, in both cases, in protracted and difficult implementation processes as vendors and adopters struggled to get the systems to work and match the circumstances of the adopting organisations. An analysis of the influence of the Installed Base on Information Infrastructures should explore how the evolution of COTS solutions is conditioned by the structure of adopter and vendor ‘communities’.

Citation

MOZAFFAR, H., WILLIAMS, R., CRESSWELL, K.M., POLLOCK, N., MORRISON, Z. and SHEIKH, A. 2017. The challenges of implementing packaged hospital electronic prescribing and medicine administration systems in UK hospitals: premature purchase of immature solutions? In Aanestad, M., Grisot, M., Hanseth, O. and Vassilakopoulou, P. (eds.) Information infrastructures within European health care: working with the installed base. Health Informatics. Cham: Springer [online], pages 129-149. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51020-0_9

• Online Publication Date: May 12, 2017
• Publication Date: Dec 31, 2017
• Deposit Date: Sep 1, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 1, 2020
• Publisher: Springer
• Pages: 129-149
• Series Title: Health informatics
• Series ISSN: 1431-1917
• Book Title: Information infrastructures within European health care: working with the installed base.
• ISBN: 9783319510187
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51020-0_9
• Keywords: National Health Service; Information infrastructure; Enterprise system; Computer integrate manufacture; English hospital
• Public URL: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/964942