Operational Use Evaluation of HealthCare Information Systems in Developing Countries

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) project managers require accurate and reliable evaluation to allocate and control project resources. In addition, many private hospitals indicated that a number of their projects failed; and between one and two thirds of ICTs projects exceed their budget and time. Further, about half of the expensive ICT projects at the end will be considered out of control and cancelled. Justifying ICT investments is a long standing problem, and managers for the past decades have expressed concerns about the value they are getting from their investments, and they have been searching for ways to evaluate and justify these projects. Hence, evaluation of ICTs is therefore becoming an important issue for both managers and practitioners. This paper aims to investigate the current practice of both types of evaluation: Prior Operational Use evaluation -POUe- and Operational Use evaluation -Oue- in Jordanian private hospitals to better understand what is required for the evaluation process and its associated benefits; secondly, to collect information about how hospitals carry out the evaluation process. In doing so, we attempts to answer specific questions, such as: How prevalent is POUe and OUe? What criteria are being used in both types of evaluation? What are their main benefits and uses of each type of evaluation? Results suggest that most decision makers do not place much importance on OUe of their IT/IS. Most managers tend to think of it only as a formality rather than a proper evaluation process. Without adopting a formal OUe the cost of future health informatics would seem likely to be less accurately estimated