Health Informatics in Developing Countries: A Review of Unintended Consequences of IT Implementations, as They Affect Patient Safety and Recommendations on How to Address Them

Abstract

Background: Patient safety concerns every healthcare organization. Adoption of Health information technology (HIT) appears to have the potential to address this issue, however unanticipated and undesirable consequences from implementing HIT could lead to new and more complex hazards. This could be particularly problematic in developing countries, where regulations, policies and implementations are few, less standandarized and in some cases almost non-existing.

Methods: Based on the available information and our own experience, we conducted a review of unintended consequences of HIT implementations, as they affect patient safety in developing countries.

Results: We found that user dependency on the system, alert fatigue, less communications among healthcare actors and workarounds topics should be prioritize. Institution should consider existing knowledge, learn from other experiences and model their implementations to avoid known consequences. We also recommend that they monitor and communicate their own efforts to expand knowledge in the region.

Keywords: Unintended consequences; developing countries; health information system; information technology; patient safety.