Enterprise Resource Planning Systems in Healthcare: A Qualitative Review

The aim of this article is to present an analysis of literature on the views, experiences and challenges of enterprise resource planning systems in healthcare. At the moment there is very limited systematic evidence on the role of these systems in healthcare. The PudMed, Emerald, CSA Engineering Research Database, ScienceDirect, ISI Web of Knowledge and Cinahl databases were searched, covering the period from January 2000 to April 2009. Studies were included if they concerned enterprise resource planning systems integrated into healthcare. The selected studies were analyzed with the thematic synthesis technique. The 135 articles were analyzed on the basis of the titles, abstracts, and full texts. At every phase, a number of articles were rejected for not meeting the inclusion criteria, and finally, 9 articles were accepted for deeper analysis. Three areas of views and experiences were identified from the reviewed studies. Furthermore, two challenge classes were identified when implementing enterprise resource planning systems.