What Went Wrong in eMedCare? Formative Evaluation of an IT Project in Primary Care in Two Rural Districts.

INTRODUCTION

The interaction between nurses and physicians in the primary care setting is challenging with regard to structural, process and technical barriers. In order to overcome these barriers, the eMedCare project was launched and a commercial system was implemented.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed at a formative evaluation of the project. The findings should be used retrospectively to understand the failure of the project.

METHODS

To this end, two rounds of qualitative interviews with 10 respectively 8 healthcare providers were performed.

RESULTS

The interviews revealed a mixed benefit. Difficulties arose because the initial aim to monitor patients shifted towards improving the communication between the providers, partly due to the poor usability of the monitoring system. Additional workload was imposed because the system was not interoperable with the institutional IT systems.

CONCLUSION

Projects with an unclear or shifting vision and focus seem to be susceptible to failure. The secure communication applications could have been realised on the intended scale if the national Telematikinfrastruktur had been in place.