Clinical and Para Clinical Information Needs of Infertility Electronic Health Records in Iran: A Delphi Study

BACKGROUND: infertility is referred to the person’s inability to conceive pregnancy after one year of intercourse without using protection. This study paves the ground for creating a complete, united, and coherent source of patients’ medical information. MATERIALS AND METHODS: this is an applied research of descriptive-cross sectional type which has been carried out through qualitative – quantitative methods. The sample of the present study was 50 specialists in the field of infertility which has been chosen based on purposive sampling method. Designing the questionnaire was done based on library studies and Gathering experts’ views was done based on Delphi technique. RESULTS: 261 items from clinical and Para clinical information of infertile patients’ electronic health records were subjected to an opinion poll by experts. During this process 223 items were accepted and 38 items have been rejected after two sessions of surveys by infertility experts. Para clinical information section consisted of 57 items that all of them have been accepted by the experts. Also, clinical information section consisted of 242 items from which 204 items were accepted and 38 items were rejected by the experts. CONCLUSION: existence of a structured electronic record system of infertile patients’ information leads to the integration of patients’ information, improvement of health care services and a decrease in treatment costs: all working to increase information safety. Furthermore, only essential and relevant information would be provided for the specialists and it will facilitate and direct the future infertility related studies due to the coherence, unity and relevance of the information.