Proofs of the necessity of medical informatics for the physicians in Bulgaria.
It is obvious that medical practice needs to sustain a radical quality change due the fast penetration of information technologies in medicine and healthcare. One of the major problems of this change is the adequate education of the medical specialists to use these information and communication technologies, including Hospital information systems and electronic medical records. A study has been carried out among the physicians in Bulgaria. The aim of the study was to check weather the Bulgarian physicians are ready to face the challenges of modern information technologies in their daily medical practice. The results show that although 97.5% of the Bulgarian physicians have a positive attitude to information technologies and 86.7% recognise the need of using computers in medicine, 84.1% of them do not have the necessary skills and knowledge to use computers in their daily medical practice. They are absolutely unaware what the electronic medical record might contribute to their practice. Their knowledge of the subject, principles and methods of medical informatics tends to nil. The study was the first of the kind carried out in Bulgaria. It proved our initial hypothesis that Bulgarian physicians need to be educated not only how to use computers, they are in badly need of education in medical informatics. The study proved that the adequate education in medical informatics is one of the most important parameters for the implementation of information technologies, especially electronic medical records in medical practice. Its result may form the background for the preparation of the strategy of teaching medical informatics in Bulgaria. The first step of the implementation of this strategy is to include medical informatics in the regular curriculum of students of medicine.
Feschieva
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Department of Social Medicine and Biostatistics, Medical Ubiversity, Varna, Bulgaria. somed@mbox.digsys.bg
Mircheva
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D001292:Attitude to Computers; D002031:Bulgaria; D003197:Computer Literacy; D003625:Data Collection; D008491:Medical Informatics Applications; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D010820:Physicians / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*