Information access behaviour and expectation of quality : Two factors affecting the satisfaction of users of clinical hospital information systems

Although the use of clinical hospital information systems (HIS) has been gaining some acceptance in the health care industry, cases of successful implementation are rare. Many clinical HIS users (who are primarily medical practitioners) are still experiencing a low level of user satisfaction with their systems. This paper argues that, in order to improve user satisfaction for clinical HIS users, due attention must be paid to the non-functional aspects of user requirements. Two aspects of non-functional user requirements, viz. information channel disposition and information demand characteristics, are investigated in this exploratory study. Information channel disposition refers to the user's preferred behavioural pattern of accessing information. Information demand characteristics refers to the user's.