title: Product diversity and spectrum of choice in hospital ePrescribing Systems in England.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  ePrescribing systems have considerable potential for improving healthcare quality and safety. With growing expectations about the benefits of such systems, there is evidence of widespread plans to implement these systems in hospitals in England where hitherto they have had a low uptake. Given the international drive away from developing home-grown to systems to procuring commercial applications, we aimed to identify available ePrescribing systems in England and to use the findings to develop a taxonomy of the systems offered by suppliers.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We undertook a scoping review of the published and grey literature, and conducted expert interviews with vendors, healthcare organisations and national ePrescribing experts in order to identify the spectrum of available systems, identify and map their key features, and then iteratively develop and validate a taxonomy of commercial ePrescribing systems available to English hospitals. There is a wide range of available systems including 13 hospital-wide applications and a range of specialty systems. These commercial applications can be grouped into four sub-categories: standalone systems, modules within integrated systems, functionalities spread over several modules, and specialty systems. The findings also reveal that apart from four packaged applications (two of which are specialty systems), all other systems have none or less than two live implementations across England.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The wide range of products developed in the last few years by different national and international suppliers, and the low uptake of these products by English hospitals indicate that the English ePrescribing market is still in its infancy. This market is undergoing rapid cycles of change, both with respect to the number of suppliers and their diversity of offerings. Constant renewal of knowledge is needed on the status of this evolving market, encompassing the products development and adoption, to assist implementation decisions and facilitate market maturity.
authors.affiliation: eHealth Research Group, Centre for Population Health Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Hajar
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Mozaffar
authors.affiliation: Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Robin
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Williams
authors.affiliation: School of Health in Social Science, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Kathrin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Cresswell
authors.affiliation: eHealth Research Group, Centre for Population Health Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Zoe
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Morison
authors.affiliation: eHealth Research Group, Centre for Population Health Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Ann
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Slee
authors.forename: Aziz
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sheikh
authors.affiliation: eHealth Research Group, Centre for Population Health Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom; Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Aziz Sheikh
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Team
mesh_terms: D002755:Choice Behavior; D003625:Data Collection; D055695:Electronic Prescribing; D004739:England; D006761:Hospitals; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet