DESIGNING A TOTAL HOSPITALWIDE INFORMATION SYSTEM
This paper is a general description of the elements and components of a Total Hospital-wide Information System (THIS) for a typical general hospital. It is a guide to the development of a typical system and is not meant to be all-inclusive nor should it be taken as a project brief or specifications for a system.
A Total Hospital-wide Information System is an attempt to provide a mechanism for the sharing of information between all the functional units of a hospital using modern information technology.
It is more appropriate, effective and efficient to design systems around functions rather than locations or administrative divisions of services. Before any system is developed it is imperative that the functions of a hospital is analysed by answering the following questions:
? What is a hospital?
? What business is it in?
? What services does it provide?
? To whom are the services provided?
? How will the services be provided?
? What are needed to provide this service?
Functions of a Hospital
The services provided by a hospital can be broadly classified into
? the core business of patient care
? services that facilitate this function
? services that enable the hospital to run as a facility / enterprise.
All these services require data (data as input) and also would generate data (data as output). Data required as input may originate from within the organisation or from external sources. Data generated as output can be either in the form of results or records of events and can be used internally or be exported to other systems.
Services provided to run the hospital as a facility are very similar to those in other service ...