OBJECTIVES: Electronic medical records (EMRs) in hospitals are potentially beneficial for quality and safety of care, but diffuse slowly. Many of the barriers and facilitators of the adoption of EMRs are identified, but the relative importance of these factors is still undetermined. This paper quantifies the relative importance of known barriers and facilitators of EMR, experienced by the users (i.e., nurses and physicians in hospitals).  METHODS: A d-efficiently designed discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted among physicians and nurses. Participants answered ten choice sets containing two scenarios. Each scenario included attributes that were based on previously identified barriers in the literature and the model of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), namely : data entry hardware, technical support, supervisor attitude, performance feedback, flexibility of interface and decision support. Panel Mixed Multinomial Logit analysis was used to determine the relative importance of the attributes. RESULTS: Data on 148 nurses and 150 physicians showed that high flexibility of the interface was the most important factor for the intention to use the EMR. For nurses this attribute was followed by support from supervisor, presence of performance feedback from the EMR and presence o f decisions support. While for physicians this ordering  differed since presence of decision support was relatively more important than performance feedback and support from the supervisor. CONCLUSIONS: Considering the prominent wish of all the intended users for a flexible interface, currently used EMRs only partially comply with the needs of the users, indicating the need for closer incorporation of user needs during development stages of EMRs. The differences in priorities amongst nurses and physicians show that different users have different needs during the implementation of innovations. Hospital management may use this information to design implementation trajectories to fit the needs of various user groups