Development and validation of an instrument to evaluate the perspective of using the electronic health record in a hospital setting.

Abstract

Background: Evaluating healthcare information systems, such as the Electronic Health Records (EHR), is both challenging and essential, especially in resource-limited countries. This study aims to psychometrically develop and validate an instrument (questionnaire) to assess the factors influencing the successful adoption of the EHR system by healthcare professionals in Moroccan university hospitals.

Methods: The questionnaire validation process occurred in two main stages. Initially, data collected from a pilot sample of 164 participants underwent analysis using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to evaluate the validity and reliability of the retained factor structure. Subsequently, the validity of the overall measurement model was confirmed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in a sample of 368 healthcare professionals.

Results: The structure of the modified HOT-fit model, comprising seven constructs (System Quality, Information Quality, Information technology Service Quality, User Satisfaction, Organization, Environment, and Clinical Performance), was confirmed through confirmatory factor analysis. Absolute, incremental, and parsimonious fit indices all indicated an appropriate level of acceptability, affirming the robustness of the measurement model. Additionally, the instrument demonstrated adequate reliability and convergent validity, with composite reliability values ranging from 0.75 to 0.89 and average variance extracted (AVE) values ranging from 0.51 to 0.63. Furthermore, the square roots of AVE values exceeded the correlations between different pairs of constructs, and the heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations (HTMT) was below 0.85, confirming suitable discriminant validity.

Conclusions: The resulting instrument, due to its rigorous development and validation process, can serve as a reliable and valid tool for assessing the success of information technologies in similar contexts.