Hospital information systems in Arab Gulf countries

138 Managers from a representative sample consisting of 24 hospitals in five countries of the Arab Gulf were asked to report on the presence and adoption of Computer-Based Information Systems (DBIS) in their hospitals. Two groups of variables were studied to assess their ability to discriminate between users and non-users of CBIS: manager characteristics and hospital organizational (contextual and structural) characteristics. The findings reveal that: hospitals owned by Ministries of Health are lower adopters of CBIS; that managers of departments that use CBIS have more favorable attitudes towards user involvement; that departments in smaller hospitals are more likely to use CBIS; and that managers of user departments tend to be older.