Abstract

The structural features of Iran’s health system obligate the development of information technology in medical field and design of an effective e-health system. Due to the importance of this issue, the current study was performed to identify the effective elements on e-health deployment in order to codify a comprehensive plan for Iran. The practical, descriptive-comparative study was conducted using semi-qualitative methods with mathematical analysis. The study populations included the following countries: Australia, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Britain, Turkey and Iran. Due to the comparative nature of the study, there were no samples and the selected countries were chosen as the sources of information. This study was performed in four stages including studying the current situation and the history of issue in Iran through documents and evidences, comprehensive study of e-health in selected countries by searching through books, materials and also the web, suggesting the primary proposal and eventually determining the proposal’s credibility and presenting the final plan using the semi-Delphi technique. The findings of the study indicated that e-health deployment priorities included individual health care identifier (IHI), patient ID, e-health card, increasing investment in information technology, electronic appointment registration, electronic prescribing and finally, telemedicine service. Strategies commonly aimed to use the information technology to provide health care services based on patients centrality. E-health infrastructures included physical networks, legal infrastructures, education, preparation and performance of e-health operation. The necessary resources to establish e-health included financial, data and other resources. The deployment of e-health included e-health record, e-health card, telemedicine service and health portals. The major obstacles to establish e-health in Iran included lack of a specific strategy, ambiguous and complicated information technology infrastructure, two cultural and educational problems in relation to training and practice in information technology and communication skills, rapid changes of managers especially in Ministry of Health and Welfare, not being able to attract skilled information technology technicians in e-health field, unclear mechanism to fund e-health system, lack of codified technical standards and weak health service implementation methods. Infrastructure of information and communication technology in Iran is complex and ambiguous and e-health strategies and priorities have not been determined yet.

Key words: E-health, prerequisites, resources.