[Use of information and communication technologies by argentine pediatricians]

There are not data in Argentina about the percentages of use of Information and Communication Technologies by pediatricians yet.

To estimate the prevalence of the use of Electronic Health Records (EHR) and Electronic Messaging. To describe the perception of advantages and disadvantages.

Observational, exploratory, descriptive and transversal study. Five submissions of a self-administered survey were made to the list of partners of the Sociedad Argentina de Pediatría between July and September of 2017.

Of 14,604 partners, 3468 responses were received (23.7 %); 2680 were complete (18.4 %). The overall percentage of use of EHR was 44 %. There were advantages: access to information (23.2 %), streamlining work (20.1 %), secure information backup (14.3 %) and availability (11.9 %), calculation of percentiles (11.1 %) and statistics (9.2 %). The perceived disadvantages: technical issues (32 %), fear of information loss (20 %), doubts about legal issues (15.8 %). The use of EHR was going to be implemented by 49.8 % of respondents in the next year. Applications to receive consultations from their patients were used by 76.9 % of pediatricians. WhatsApp (46.6 %) was the most integrated platform. It was considered by 74 % that non face to face consultations should be remunerated.

EHR was used by 44 % of pediatricians who responded. And 49.8 % were considering the implementation of some EHR system during the next year. Electronic messaging was widespread (76.9 %) in all age ranges.