Question

When purchasing a new electronic health records system for an organization what would be some critical success factors in the purchase of a new system? How would you ensure that end users are involved in the process and why would this be important? What are ways to know if the selected system and purchase was successful?

Answer 1

When purchasing the electronic health records system for an organisation , some of the critical success factors in the purchase are -

• Total cost of ownership - purchase should not be based on only price but other factors such as maintenance, benefits from system etc should be taken in consideration while selecting health records system
• Objective of purchase - purchasing new system should met the objective /need of purchase of electronic health records system . The objective may be to make employee more healthy , reduce number of sick leaves etc.
• Usage and adaptability - usage of system and how people adapt the system will be another critical success factor.

End users should be involved in the process from the start of purchase as the requirement and machine specification should be matched. We can involve them by meeting them , try to understand their requirement or may be conducting survey. Initial involvement of end users are very important as at the end they are the user who will use the product and regular usage will make the purchase successfull.

Measuring the key success factors of purchase post procurement is the ways to check if selected system and purchase was successful or not.

Measuring key changes in success factors helps to assess whether the purchase is success or not.