A Comparative Study of Challenges and Opportunities of Outsourcing in Health Information Technology

Outsourcing is an inclusive, diversely defined term, which refers to transfer of executive or financial control of institutions owned by the government to the private sector. The purpose of the present study was to study the advantages and challenges of medical outsourcing and, more specifically, outsourcing of medical records and the employed information technology. The study was conducted according to descriptive-comparative method on the advantages and challenges of medical outsourcing and the employed information technology in 2012-2013. The data were gathered from information sources, articles, books, journals, and reliable websites on technology development and the advantages and challenges of medical outsourcing in the health area. Findings indicated that factors such as cost decrease, improvement of production process and productivity, quality increase, promotion of customer’s satisfaction were included among the advantages of outsourcing. But general medical outsourcing has undergone a slower growth compared to other types of outsourcing. For low income countries, a prerequisite for successful outsourcing was indeed creation of an environment, in which private sector could function effectively.

Author(s): Mahmoud Mobasheri, Razieh Mirzaeian, Javad Sharifi-Rad and Afsaneh Amini

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