There are various titles and acronyms which all declare similar approaches to managing the information flow and storage in hospital routine services, as
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.
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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[1][2][3][4].
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.
There is no standardization but for data formats and for data interchange, as with the HL7 initiative supported by ISO.
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
• 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. [5]
• It helps as a decision support system for the hospital authorities for developing comprehensive health care policies.[6]
• 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.[7]