Hospital Information System

Hospital Information System

What is HIS?
A hospital information system (HIS) is a computer system that can manage all the information to allow health care providers allows them to do their job effectively. They were introduced in the 1960s and have changed over time. Computers weren’t as fast in the past as they are today and they were not able to provide information in real time. The staff used them primarily for managing billing and hospital inventory.

The system must be user friendly and should include training by experts. A good HIS gives a number of benefits to a hospital such as the delivery of quality patient care and financial management. HIS should be focused on patient and medical staff; above all else, it must be affordable and practical. A good HIS system would deliver: (2)

•	Improve information accuracy

•	Reduce errors

•	Remove and reduce duplication of data

•	Improve the efficiency of the hospital

History of HIS
In the 1960s, computers and storage were large and expensive hospitals usually shared their networks with each other. The main thing that was emerging was hospital accounting systems.

This began to improve in the 1980s, Computers started to become smaller and much cheaper and quicker. Hospitals are now able to get a large amount of information from both clinical and financial systems

Finally in the 2000s, technology has significantly advanced at this point; it allowed hospitals to create applications that would assist in commercial and real-time decisions. Furthermore the software had become much more accessible due to the wide spread use of personal computers (3)

What is electronic medical record (EMR)
An electronic medical record is a digital version of the paper based medical record for an individual.

There are a number of different types of digitised health records that contain most of the same types of information. A personal health record is health related documents that is maintained by the individual. An electronic health record is an official health document for an individual that is shared among multiple organisations. Governments want as many countries to have an EHR for every citizen and that it is up to date (1)

The main advantage of EMR
There is a multitude of advantages of using EMR and going into a paperless database compared to using a papered one. For example it will be much more accurate and easier to maintain than having to get than deciphering what a person has written or entering data manually. In addition it allows for quick assess for information that is much more efficient and uses up less storage space (less paper backup, hard drives improving in storage). The information can be shared safely among hospital systems, this ensures that the data is always at the hands of a qualified medical adviser, and privacy is secure.

More importantly it means that the patient diagnose is much quicker and reduce the error margin; this is achieved as information is transferred much more quickly between hospitals and the information is much more accurate. Finally, it improves the efficiency of patient health care; this means that the patient receives a better quality of care.

Study showing the impact of HIS on the quality of healthcare
This was a study that was conducted by a hospital on the impacts on HIS:

“Aim: To explore the perceptions of nurses about the use of a Hospital Information System (HIS) in the provision of patient care in terms of information and system quality.

Results: The survey response rate was 82 per cent (140 out of 170 nurses responded) and the resultant Cronbach’s alpha statistic was 0.78. Generally, 87.9 per cent of respondents utilized HIS in their daily practice. System characteristics identified by the nurses as beneficial included timeliness, reliability, data completeness and accuracy of information.”

From this data it suggests that the use of HIS with proper training meant that the system was utilised everyday by the medical staff and furthermore a large majority used it. Nurses saw that it benefited with timeliness and reliability, data completeness and accuracy of information

“Conclusion: The findings of this study indicated that the nurses in this sample perceived that HIS qualities of timeliness and reliability contributed to complete and accurate information about patients in nursing practice. These qualities appeared to enhance the value of the HIS in the nurses’ perception.”

This shows an overwhelming success of using the system and that it enabled the nurses to perform at a better standard and to be able to provide better service for patients (5)

The use of health information technology improves the quality of medical and health care
This can be shown by a number of examples; it reduces the amount of errors from handwriting and human error; this is critical as the wrong prescription may kill people. Furthermore it allows drugs usage to be monitored in real time allowing better decisions to be made.

The table below shows the opinions of doctors on their opinion of having HIT system in places, the majority believe that by having the system in place it increase the quality and care but also reduces the errors; across all fields. This suggests that the system is definitely worth having as agreed upon; the benefits outweigh the cost of the system. (4) (Please visit reference 4 for table).

The main target of the next generation of HIS
The next version of EMR is having an interface that is interactive and simple to use for all generation, which requires little or no training at all. This ensures that generations of people are able to use the platform; furthermore it ensures the platform is universal and understandable.

By ensuring that the UI is easy to understand and use, it allows more hospitals to recruit it to their systems, and adapt it to their environment. This will reduce time spent training and hence productivity and cost. For example we found a useful website that suggest an insight of what to expect: https://www.nextgen.com/ Overall this is will reduce cost, increase efficiency and give a more personalised patient care.