چکیده (انگلیسی):

Healthcare Information Systems (HISs) in hospitals have become an influential factor to provide
cooperation among physicians in sharing healthcare information. Many cooperative HIS models were
proposed. However, they focused on management of the patients’ information and do not address the issue
of improving the physicians’ skills due to many factors. In this study, a mixed data collection approach is
used first to determine the current levels of cooperation among physicians with regard to the sharing of
information and skills in the patient treatment within selected hospitals in Kurdistan region of Iraq. The second, it
is first used to determine factors affecting such cooperation and second to determine how the activities of
Research and Development (R&D) units affect this cooperation. The results of this study showed that the
cooperation among physicians in sharing information and skills is poor due to the six important factors. The study
also founded that there is positive relation between R&D unit activities and cooperation among physicians in
sharing patient information and their skills. The study findings provided that the development of cooperative
HISs environment should be adapted based on an open, autonomic, flexible and cooperative model to support
exchange of productive information among physicians in real time in order to improve their skills by acquiring
new knowledge from each other within same and between different hospitals.