Final Research Project EMR Implementation/Adoption in China - Assignment Example

FINAL RESEARCH PROJECT EMR ADOPTION IN CHINA Introduction The fast pace of speed with which the world is moving from a conventionally manual into a digitised state is fast catching up with the healthcare sector. Writing on the technological revolution in the healthcare sector, quote (year) noted that the fact that the influence of manual human inputs have been limited is one of the best things that ever happened to the sector. This point can be agreed with, given the extent of limitations associated which human controlled medical health delivery. This was the motivation with which the researcher became interested in focusing on the adoption of electronic medical record (EMR) in China’s healthcare system. Preliminary data gathered, mainly through the review of related literature have established that unlike other countries like Canada, Denmark, Jordan, and the United States where the use of EMR can be said to be widespread, China is in an early stage of adoption of EMR (quote). Meanwhile, when beginning any new system or programme of this nature, stakeholders become faced with the need of answering several questions that border on safety, cost, and maintenance. The methodology chapter of the research is dedicated to the presentation of methods used in collecting data that addresses some of the key concerns associated with the implementation of EMR in China. To ensure that all aspects of the study flow together and are well connected to each other, the methodology was performed with a very strong focus and emphasis on the research questions set in the first chapter of the study. The first research question focused on the barriers of the adoption and implementation of EMR in China. To answer this question, the researcher was involved in the collection of data from a number of health care facilities in China who have documented records about some of the core challenges they went through while implementing the EMR in their facilities. There is also the question of the potential financial and safety impacts from EMR adoption, where the facilities were quizzed on the benefits that have received from EMR since its adoption. The benefits offered a comparative analysis between period before the adoption and period after the adoption. In this chapter, a number of methodological procedures that were engaged in by the researcher are presented. There is the presentation of research design, which defines the research strategy used by the researcher in the data collection process. The selected research design is extensively justified by giving reasons that made its selection preferable to other available and similar designs. There is also a description of the participants involved in the study. This is done by focusing on the target population and the sampling procedures used in selecting the sample from among the population. After this, the researcher gives very detailed analysis of the characteristics of the population and the sample size, which includes justifications for the chosen sample and the number of participants involved in the study. There is also extensive discussion of the geographic location used in the study and why it was thought to be the best option for the researcher. Any limitations faced with the geographic location and how these were addressed is all presented as part of the chapter. Also, the researcher gives a detailed analysis of the instrumentation used for the collection of data in the study. Research Design According to quote (year), the research design is used to represent the overall strategy adopted by the researcher in integrating different components of the study in a coherent and logical form. It would be noted that ahead of the research, the researcher may have one of two major mindsets, which comprise the research approach. This research approach determines whether the researcher builds on existing knowledge or constructs an entirely new form of knowledge based on a question problem (quote). Where the researcher seeks to build on existing form of knowledge, part of the available knowledge is used to construct a hypothesis, based on which data are collected to test and examine the hypothesis that was set. Such research approach is known as deductive research approach (quote). There is also another approach known as inductive research approach whereby the researcher assumes that new knowledge needs to be constructed with a given research problem. In such an instance, the researcher depends on the collection of data to construct theory (quote). In would be noted that in either case, the need to collect data in a coherent and logical form is very important. This is because the collection of data is also used to either prove a hypothesis or set up a new form of theory. The research design therefore offers the researcher that opportunity of collecting data in a manner that fits the overall purpose of the study and the approach to the study. There are several types of research designs, each of which seeks to fits a very special situation of data collection. In the current study, the researcher employed the use of case study research design. Quote (year) defined a case study to be an in-depth study of an identified research problem. By the use of the word in-depth, the implication that is established is that the researcher was very critical with the analysis of the research problem rather than having a sweeping statistical survey or comparative inquiry of issues (quote). Very often, case studies are said to be very specific to identifiable research settings where the research problem is found. In this study for example, the research setting from which the research problem was identified was the Chinese healthcare system. Within the system, the issue, problem or topic that was studied as part of the case study was the adoption of EMR. As quote (year) noted, case studies are often very narrow, allowing the researcher the opportunity of going very in-depth with the collection of data. This is because very often, there are fewer people or areas within the larger research setting. Quote (year) however argues that the fact that not very large is covered in case studies could be a limitation and affect the generalisation of findings negatively. This was however not a limitation that hampered the success of the current study. This is because in this research, the researcher had a very specific focus of investigation and that was China and its adoption of EMR. The need to generalise findings to cater for the adoption of EMR for healthcare delivery in general was therefore not a major issue. Justification for Research Design There were a number of factors that influenced the use of the case study research design. These factors and the merits that come with the use of the case study comprise the justification of the study. The first justification for the use of a case is in line with the research type or research method, which was a qualitative research method. As noted by quote (year), qualitative research is a type of research in which the researcher seeks to understand a social phenomenon by exploring issues, understanding phenomena, and answering questions. Indeed for each of these objectives to be achieved, it is important that there will be a means by which the researcher gets down with the actual people involved in the issues. It was for this reason that using case study research deign was found to be very ideal for this study. For example, as part of the case study, the researcher gained access to a number of health care facilities that are directly involved in the use of EMR. The second rationale for selecting case study research design is that it rightly related to the inductive research approach adopted for the study. As explained earlier, in an inductive research approach, the researcher seeks to construct theory through the collection of data. There is no hypothesis as it is assumed that knowledge in the area of study is very limited or scanty. For this study, the theory that needed to be constructed focused on the barriers to the adoption and implementation of EMR in China, as well as an understanding of the financial and safety benefits that come with the use of EMR. Even though there are models from other parts of the world such as Denmark, Norway and Canada that could be used as reference point to establish a hypothesis, the researcher felt that each country is unique with its health care philosophy. For this reason, it was important that China would be treated as a unique and isolated setting. Meanwhile given an instance like this where the research setting must be seen as unique and isolated, case study allows the researcher to be thorough with investigations on that particular research setting (quote). What is more, case study was chosen for its advantage of being focused and direct. Quote (year) lamented that in several research works, researchers have failed to justifiable the validity of their findings because they tend to be overall general with their outcomes. By so doing, they are forced to handle too many data sources than they can actually deal with in the time frame for the research to be completed. Knowing that this was an academic research that needed to be finished within a specific time frame, the researcher took advantage of the case study to ensure that only the most relevant and necessary settings were approached for the collection of data. These included selected health care facilities that have implemented the EMR in China. Knowing that as a country, China’s healthcare system has a common dynamic, it was possible to take data from a selected few in a very detailed and in-depth manner and generalise these for remaining facilities that were not contacted directly. Target Population and Sampling Procedures The target population of the study refers to all people within the research setting with whom there is some probability or chance of including in the study. In the current research, the research setting was the Chinese healthcare system. Information available from the Chinese health ministry indicates that China operates a multi-layered medical insurance system. This multi-layered medical insurance system directly affects the larger health system where there attendant medical healthcare provisions given to urban employees, urban residents, and rural cooperatives (quote). Preliminary data collected through literature review showed that the medical health outcomes with each of these three layers are often different. This is because each of the layers seems to receive a different outlook of medical health provision with the outlook getting worse when going down the multi-layer (quote). With this noted, the researcher constructed the target population in such a way that embraces health facilities in each of the layers. This was done knowing that such representation could help in generalising the findings of the study. This was also done with the idea that each layer of the health system had its own issues that would give different lines of response with barriers to adoption and implementation of EMR as well as financial and safety benefits from the system. In effect, the target population comprised three major layers of health system provision, which were the urban employed, urban resident, and rural cooperative. On the whole, there are estimated 3,074,000 hospital beds, which represent 2.4 per 1,000 persons for all three layers (quote). Given the number of hospital beds and the representation in terms of persons, one gets the understanding that there were more people than the researcher could cover within the timeframe given. This notwithstanding, it was still important that the kind of fair representation from the three layers would be achieved. In the light of this, the researcher used a systematic sampling procedure to select four (4) medical facilities from among the lot. Read More