This paper shall first investigate the informatics areas and applications of the four Traditional Medicine systems - Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), Ayurveda, Traditional Arabic and Islamic Medicine and Traditional Malay Medicine. Then, this paper shall examine the national informatics infrastructure initiatives in the four respective countries that support the Traditional Medicine systems. Challenges of implementing informatics in Traditional Medicine Systems shall also be discussed.
This study aims to investigate healthcare practitioner behaviour in adopting Health Information Systems which could affect patients' safety and quality of health. A qualitative study was conducted based on a semi-structured interview protocol on 31 medical doctors in three Malaysian government hospitals implementing the Total Hospital Information Systems. The period of study was between March and May 2015. A thematic qualitative analysis was performed on the resultant data to categorize them into relevant themes. Four themes emerged as healthcare practitioners' behaviours that influence the unsafe use of Hospital Information Systems. The themes include (1) carelessness, (2) workarounds, (3) noncompliance to procedure, and (4) copy and paste habit. By addressing these behaviours, the hospital management could further improve patient safety and the quality of patient care.
The objective of this study is to identify factors influencing unsafe use of hospital information systems in Malaysian government hospitals. Semi-structured interviews with 31 medical doctors in three Malaysian government hospitals implementing total hospital information systems were conducted between March and May 2015. A thematic qualitative analysis was performed on the resultant data to deduce the relevant themes. A total of five themes emerged as the factors influencing unsafe use of a hospital information system: (1) knowledge, (2) system quality, (3) task stressor, (4) organization resources, and (5) teamwork. These qualitative findings highlight that factors influencing unsafe use of a hospital information system originate from multidimensional sociotechnical aspects. Unsafe use of a hospital information system could possibly lead to the incidence of errors and thus raises safety risks to the patients. Hence, multiple interventions (e.g. technology systems and teamwork) are required in shaping high-quality hospital information system use.