Hospital Information System

What is HIS?
A hospital information system (HIS) is a computer system that can manage all the information to 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.

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:

•	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

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

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.