Exploring Healthcare Professionals’ Opinions on Electronic Prescription Systems in Greece: Results and Insights from a Nationwide Survey
Electronic Prescription (e-prescription) systems are increasingly adopted in healthcare worldwide. Similarly, in Greece, since 2011, a national e-prescription system assists healthcare professionals (HCPs). Research discussing the acceptability and usability of these systems, by assessing the opinions of the main users is limited, even though HCPs’ feedback is valuable to evolve and improve healthcare services.
Our research paper, presents the survey conducted in the context of the PrescIT project (funded under the call RESEARCH–CREATE–INNOVATE), with the participation of 430 HCPs, aiming to elicit their views on e-prescription systems in Greece. The survey outcomes showed that e-prescribing systems positively impact the prescribing process by reducing errors and simplifying procedures compared to handwritten prescriptions. HCPs view automation as a way to decrease medication errors and streamline prescription handling. However, they believe further improvements are needed to better support decision-making. While these systems initially focused on administrative and auditing functions, now there is a need to shift towards enhancing patient care quality and safety.
Key areas for further exploration, as identified, include providing HCPs with information on adverse drug reactions, side effects, drug interactions, and allergies. It is perceived that access to patients’ Electronic Health Records (EHRs), medical history, and past diagnoses streamlines e-prescribing, while flexible interaction with Therapeutic Prescription Protocols (TPPs) aids monitoring and decision-making. Desired features to simplify workflow include drug dosing control, easy drug selection, and actions like copying, repeating, and canceling prescriptions. The HCPs’ feedback was used and translated to technical requirements and features integrated into the system developed within the PrescIT project for smart, efficient and safe e-prescription.
Read the full paper: Grammatikopoulou, M., Lazarou, I., Giannios, G., Kakalou, C.A., Zachariadou, M., Zande, M., Karanikas, H., Thireos, E., Stavropoulos, T.G., Natsiavas, P., Nikolopoulos, S., Kompatsiaris, I., Electronic prescription systems in Greece: a large-scale survey of healthcare professionals’ perceptions. Arch Public Health 82, 68 (2024). 10.1186/s13690-024-01304-6
The dataset generated and analyzed during the study is available in the Zenodo repository (https://zenodo.org/record/8096705).
