Title: Electronic medical records: taking young generations of patients and physicians through innovative technology and change management

Authors: Jamil Razmak; Charles H. Bélanger; Ghaleb A. El Refae; Wejdan Farhan

Addresses: College of Business, Al Ain University, P.O. Box 112612, Abu Dhabi, UAE ' Laurentian University, 935 Ramsey Lake Rd., Sudbury, P3E2C6, ON, Canada ' Al Ain University, P.O. Box 112612, Abu Dhabi, UAE ' College of Business, Al Ain University, P.O. Box 112612, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Abstract: Billions of dollars have been invested in developing, implementing, and promoting an electronic medical records system that Canadian physicians (EMR) and patients (electronic personal records) would use to manage healthcare files. Barriers have been identified in the literature and there is a wide range of them. The main research objectives of the study aimed to assess EMR adoption by physicians based on their age and to determine the preferences of patients in using the EMR system. Secondary data were tapped from the National Physicians' Survey respondents encompassing close to 10,000 physicians from across Canada, 4,000 from Ontario, and 316 from Northern Ontario as well as 325 patients who were directly surveyed to obtain primary data. Significant differences were found across geographical jurisdictions and age strata in terms of electronic adoption by physicians and patients. The general trend leads to younger physicians using more exclusively electronic records than their senior colleagues do.

Keywords: electronic medical records; EMR; change management; e-health adoption; young generations.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEH.2021.117121

International Journal of Electronic Healthcare, 2021 Vol.11 No.3, pp.208 - 238

Received: 18 Aug 2019
Accepted: 13 Nov 2020
Published online: 18 Aug 2021 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article