Hospital information system

There are various titles and acronyms which all declare similar approaches to managing the information flow and storage in hospital routine services, as

• Hospital Information System (HIS), or
• Healthcare Information System, or
• Clinical Information System (CIS), or
• Patient Data Management System (PDMS)

are comprehensive, integrated information systems designed to manage the medical, administrative, financial and legal aspects of a hospital and its service processing. Traditional approaches encompass paper-based information processing as well as resident work position and mobile data acquisition and presentation.

Architecture

Generally all breeds are supported in client-server architectures for networking and processing. Most work positions for HIS currently are resident types. Mobile computing started with wheeled PC stands and now comes to age with tablet-PC and smartphone applications.

Up to date a cloud computing alternative is not recommended, as data security of individual patient records services are not well accepted by the public.

HIS can be composed of one or a few software components with specialty-specific extensions as well as of a large variety of sub-systems in medical specialties, as e.g. Laboratory Information System (LIS), Radiology Information System (RIS) or Picture archiving and communication system (PACS).

CISs are sometimes separated from HISs in that one focuses the flow management and clinical-state-related data and the other focuses the patient-related data with the doctor's letters and the electronic patient record. However, the naming varies from vendor to vendor and from hospital to hospital.

Standardization

There is no standardization but for data formats and for data interchange, as with the HL7 initiative supported by ISO.

Aim

As an area of medical informatics the aim of an HIS is to achieve the best possible support of patient care and outcome and administration by presenting data where needed and acquiring data when generated with networked electronic data processing.

Organizational Structure

The head of the HIS department is a person who is qualified and experienced in computer systems. Graduate and postgraduate computer diploma/degree holders are available. Depending on the set-up and the extent of computerization and its sophistication, the department may have some or all of the following staff in addition to the head of the department.

Systems Administrator/Database Administrator

The systems administrator-cum-database administrator is responsible for systems administration to ensure high uptime of the system and for handling all database back-up and restoration activities.

Application Specialist and Trainer

The hospital’s application specialist together with the software vendor is involved in all the activities required for implementing the application software. Trainers train and retrain new employees in the hospital.

Hardware/network Engineers

Hardware/Network engineers are responsible for maintaining the hardware and network systems in the hospital. They undertake all troubleshooting activities that may be required to

Benefits of HIS

• Easy Access to Patient Data to generate varied records, including classification based on demographic, gender, age, and so on. It is especially beneficial at ambulatory (out-patient) point, hence enhancing continuity of care. As well as, Internet-based access improves the ability to remotely access such data.

• It helps as a decision support system for the hospital authorities for developing comprehensive health care policies.

• Efficient and accurate administration of finance, diet of patient, engineering, and distribution of medical aid.

• Improved monitoring of drug usage, and study of effectiveness. This leads to the reduction of adverse drug interactions while promoting more appropriate pharmaceutical utilization.

• Enhances information integrity, reduces transcription errors, and reduces duplication of information entries.

See also

• Medical record
• Online office suite
• Electronic health record (EHR)
• Electronic medical record (EMR)
• Laboratory information system (LIS)
• ICU quality and management tools
• Radiology information system (RIS)
• PACS (medical imaging)
• Medical technologist

Further reading

• Shortliffe EH, Cimino JJ eds. Biomedical Informatics: Computer Applications in Health Care and Biomedicine (3rd edition). New York: Springer, 2006
• National Institute of Clinical Excellence, Principles of Best Practice in Clinical Audit. London: NICE, 2002. (ISBN 1-85775-976-1)
• Olmeda, Christopher J. (2000). Information Technology in Systems of Care. Delfin Press. ISBN 978-0-9821442-0-6
• Payne PR, Greaves AW, Kipps TJ., CRC Clinical Trials Management System (CTMS): an integrated information management solution for collaborative clinical research, AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2003;:967.
• MEDIX ERP, Hospital Information Management System: Developed by Fauji Foundation, Pakistan.

MEDIX Apps Tiers:-

   a) Database Tier with Data Gaurd
   b) Application Server Tier
   c) Client Tier

MEDIX Development Tools & Technologies

   * Oracle 10g Forms (Front End)
   * Oracle 10g Database (Back End)
   * Oracle Application Server (middle Tier web server)

MEDIX HL7 Standards: Medix Radiology Management System supports HL7 Standards. We have developed a middle tier converter for HL7 which converts any required Medix module.

MEDIX Financials:

   * Medix Financials is based on Oracle Financials
   * its a batch based and transactional based system
   * Chart of Account can be configured upto n level.

ISO Standards

   * Medix Clinicals, Administrative and Financial modules are developed with higly configurable Flows. This flexibility helps us cater for diverse flows for any hospital with unique flows. We are able to map any standardized flows including ISO standard flows. Since most of the hospitals in Pakistan do not follow ISO standards, it is imperative that we allow such flexibility.
   * All security measures and checks maintained in Medix are per industry standard. Our own experience within the local Pakistan industry is key to implement further   enhanced checks.