Naval Medical paper-less office : the way of the future

Abstract

This thesis studied the paper-less office concept in the naval medical community. A paper-less office is defined as an "environment where the transmission, storage, and retrieval of information is not done through the medium of paper; rather, it is done through electronic data networks (Hicks, 1997)." The hypotheses were constructed in the following manner: The greater the resource, leadership, technology, etc. the higher the probability of success in creating a paper-less office." Data was gathered using a web-based survey approach. The survey was sent to all the Naval Medical Treatment Facilities (MTFs) Chief Information Officers (CIOs). Upon receipt of the survey data, SPSS software was used to conduct the statistical analysis. The objective of this thesis was to investigate what the Naval Medical Treatment Facility CIOs are doing to move towards a paper-less office and what the determinants are in developing a paper-less office. Although the hypotheses were not supported, the data identified both accomplishments (such as intranet creation, installation of fax server, etc.) and current activities undertaken by the MTFs CIOs in the paper-less office environment.