This refers to the genealogy of the ePrescribing platform–i.e. whether it is a bespoke locally developed (or system or a standardised commercial package. “home-grown”) Locally developed systems may, once mature, demonstrate increased benefits because the systems are developed to fit with idiosyncratic working practices and also because clinicians tend to more tolerant of the shortcomings of a system that they have, even in a small way, contributed to the development of. However, due to the cost of maintaining local IT development resources and the cost of developing bespoke solutions, the trend across the IT sector has move away from bespoke development and become more dependent on standardised packages from major commercial suppliers. This axis is a continuum because systems may initially have been developed for local implementation, but their kernel then forms the basis for a commercial package that is sold onto users elsewhere. This is often witnessed in the major software development processes (see Box 10.1 as an example of this). Furthermore, this is because commercial systems allow differing degrees of configurability, ranging from none or very little to substantial. Rothschild points out the limitation this creates in the current ePrescribing literature as there is possible limited generalisability of findings from studies focusing on locally developed ePrescribing systems, commercial projects that are more rather than “off-the-shelf” commonly found in non-research settings. Most early adopted ePrescribing systems were home-grown while commercial systems tend to be seen as more rigid and lacking the adoptability to meet individual organisational needs.
This refers to the genealogy of the ePrescribing platform–i.e. whether it is a bespoke locally developed (or “home-grown”) system or a standardised commercial package. Locally developed systems may, once mature, demonstrate increased benefits because the systems are developed to fit with idiosyncratic working practices and also because clinicians tend to more tolerant of the shortcomings of a system that they have, even in a small way, contributed to the development of. However, due to the cost of maintaining local IT development resources and the cost of developing bespoke solutions, the trend across the IT sector has move away from bespoke development and become more dependent on standardised packages from major commercial suppliers. This axis is a continuum because systems may initially have been developed for local implementation, but their kernel then forms the basis for a commercial package that is sold onto users elsewhere. This is often witnessed in the major software development processes (see Box 10.1 as an example of this). Furthermore, this is because commercial systems allow differing degrees of configurability, ranging from none or very little to substantial. Rothschild points out the limitation this creates in the current ePrescribing literature as there is possible limited generalisability of findings from studies focusing on locally developed ePrescribing systems, rather than “off-the-shelf” commercial projects that are more commonly found in non-research settings. Most early adopted ePrescribing systems were home-grown while commercial systems tend to be seen as more rigid and lacking the adoptability to meet individual organisational needs.