UNIFYING THE MEDICAL PROFILES OF HOSPITAL SYSTEM IN SAUDI ARABIA Running Title: Unifying medical profiles of hospital system

Background: Several systems with improved decision-making, communication, and data management were deployed across various healthcare institutions in the previous time for the improvement in communication technologies, the field of interoperability, and health data sharing. Thus, this study aimed to reduce the chances of medical errors and improve the quality of health care in Saudi Arabia.

Methods: This cross-sectional survey was carried out among Saudi Arabia's general population through simple random sampling technique. Participants' information was gathered using a Google Form for an online self-administered questionnaire.

Results:  In this study a total of 1,345 participants were involved. The majority of study population thought that seeking treatment for the same illness in more than one hospital was time and money consuming (83.3%). In addition, current results found that the highest proportion of participants stated that they felt bothered when they filled the data in order to create a new medical file. Most of them preferred to seek medical treatment for illness at the same hospital or clinic (61%). Regarding unifying hospitals system in Saudi Arabia, it was found that the highest percentage of participants thought that there should be a unified system in Saudi Arabia linked among hospitals to unify the medical profile. Furthermore, it was found that most of the participants sometimes used internet to search about specific disease or side effects (44.5%).

Conclusion:  This study assessed participants' perspective on unifying the medical profiles of the Saudi Hospital System and determined that the majority of participants advocated unifying the medical profiles.

Keywords: unified, hospital systems, information, Saudi Arabia, medical profiles