Longitudinal analysis on utilization of medical document management system in a hospital with EPR implementation

Document management systems (DMS) have widespread in major hospitals in Japan as a platform to digitize the paper-based records being out of coverage by EPR. This study aimed to examine longitudinal trends of actual use of DMS in a hospital in which EPR had been in operation, which would be conducive to planning the further information management system in the hospital. Degrees of utilization of electronic documents and templates with DMS were analyzed based on data extracted from a university-affiliated hospital with EPR. As a result, it was found that the number of electronic documents as well as scanned documents circulating at the hospital tended to increase. The result indicated that replacement of paper-based documents with electronic documents did not occur. Therefore it was anticipated that the need for DMS would continue to increase in the hospital. The methods used this study to analyze the trend of DMS utilization would be applicable to other hospitals with with a variety of DMS implementation, such as electronic storage by scanning documents or paper preservation that is compatible with EPR.