HOSPITAL INFORMATION SYSTEM

Hospital Information System: A hospital information system is an element of health informatics that focuses mainly on the Administrational needs of hospitals. In many implementations, a HIS is a comprehensive, integrated information system designed to manage all the aspects of a hospital's operation, such as medical, administrative, financial, and legal issues and the corresponding processing of services.

Hospital information system is also known as hospital management software (HMS) or hospital management system.

Management Information System: A Management Information System is an information system that evaluates, analyzes, and processes an organization's data to produce meaningful and useful information based on which the management can take right decisions to ensure future growth of the organization.

Data: Data is defined as 'groups of non-random symbols in the form of text, images, and voice representing quantities, action and objects'.

Information: "Information is a data that has been processed into a form that is meaningful to recipient and is of real or perceived value in the current or the prospective action or decision of recipient."

Need & Objective of Information

Information processing beyond doubt is the dominant industry of the present century. Following factors states few common factors that reflect on the needs and objectives of the information processing-

௨Increasing impact of information processing for organizational decision making.

௨Dependency of services sector including banking, financial organization, health care, entertainment, tourism and travel, education and numerous others on information.

௨Changing employment scene world over, shifting base from manual agricultural to machine-based manufacturing and other industry related jobs.

௨Information revolution and the overall development scenario.

௨Growth of IT industry and its strategic importance.

௨Strong growth of information services fuelled by increasing competition and reduced product life cycle.

௨Need for sustainable development and quality life.

௨Improvement in communication and transportation brought in by use of information processing.

௨Use of information processing in reduction of energy consumption, reduction in pollution and a better ecological balance in future.

௨Use of information processing in land record managements, legal delivery system, educational institutions, natural resource planning, customer relation management and so on.

The following list summarizes the five main uses of information by businesses and other organizations –

Planning − At the planning stage, information is the most important ingredient in decision making. Information at planning stage includes that of business resources, assets, liabilities, plants and machineries, properties, suppliers, customers, competitors, market and market dynamics, fiscal policy changes of the Government, emerging technologies, etc.

Recording − Business processing these days involves recording information about each transaction or event. This information collected, stored and updated regularly at the operational level.

Controlling − A business need to set up an information filter, so that only filtered data is presented to the middle and top management. This ensures efficiency at the operational level and effectiveness at the tactical and strategic level.

Measuring − A business measures its performance metrics by collecting and analyzing sales data, cost of manufacturing, and profit earned.

Decision-making − MIS is primarily concerned with managerial decision making, theory of organizational behavior, and underlying human behavior in organizational context. Decision-making information includes the socio-economic impact of competition, globalization, democratization, and the effects of all these factors on an organizational structure.

Classification of Information

Information are Classified on Following Basis.

Classification by Characteristics

1. Action vs. non action information: Action information is active information that causes an activity or operation, while the information that communicates only when the status is applied without any operation is called non-action

2. Recurring vs. non recurring information: The information that is generated in regular intervals is called recurring information, whereas non-repetitive in nature is called non-recurring information.

3. Internal vs. external information: all information that produced from internal sources of any organization is called internal information, though all information that produced from external sources

Classification by Decision Making

Based on Anthony's classification of Management, information used in business for decision-making is generally categorized into three types -

1. Strategic Information − Strategic information is concerned with long term policy decisions that defines the objectives of a business and checks how well these objectives are met. For example, acquiring a new plant, a new product, diversification of business etc, comes under strategic information.

2. Tactical Information − Tactical information is concerned with the information needed for exercising control over business resources, like budgeting, quality control, service level, inventory level, productivity level etc.

3. Operational Information − Operational information is concerned with plant/business level information and is used to ensure proper conduction of specific operational tasks as planned/intended. Various operator specific, machine specific and shift specific jobs for quality control checks comes under this category.

Classification by Application

In terms of applications, information can be categorized as −

1. Planning Information − These are the information needed for establishing standard norms and specifications in an organization. This information is used in strategic, tactical, and operation planning of any activity. Examples of such information are time standards, design standards.

2. Control Information − This information is needed for establishing control over all business activities through feedback mechanism. This information is used for controlling attainment, nature and utilization of important processes in a system. When such information reflects a deviation from the established standards, the system should induce a decision or an action leading to control.

3. Knowledge Information − Knowledge is defined as "information about information". Knowledge information is acquired through experience and learning, and collected from archival data and research studies.

4. Organizational Information − Organizational information deals with an organization's environment, culture in the light of its objectives. Karl Weick's Organizational Information Theory emphasizes that an organization reduces its equivocality or uncertainty by collecting, managing and using these information prudently. This information is used by everybody in the organization; examples of such information are employee and payroll information.

5. Functional/Operational Information − This is operation specific information. For example, daily schedules in a manufacturing plant that refers to the detailed assignment of jobs to machines or machines to operators. In a service oriented business, it would be the duty roster of various personnel. This information is mostly internal to the organization.

6. Database Information − Database information construes large quantities of information that has multiple usage and application. Such information is stored, retrieved and managed to create databases. For example, material specification or supplier information is stored for multiple users.

Classification by Management Hierarchy

1. Supervisor Level Information

2. Middle Level Management

3. Top Level Management

Types/Level of Information

Executive Information System (EIS)

Executive Information System: EIS is a system located at the top level of administration pyramid, employed for providing a suitable environment to flow the information from the internal and external sources to meet requirements of the senior executives from the information by providing a framework for accessing easily to the information and achieve the strategic goals of the organization

Outlines of EIS

1. Provides a suitable environment to easy access the internal and external information.

2. Provides easy access to data warehousing system that contains the past and latest data.

3. Concerned with high level management.

4. Uses data mining techniques for the purpose of aggregate, analysis data and predicting the future.

5. Provides a better view using both graphics and text tools for the purpose of repo

Decision support systems (DSS)

Decision support systems (DSS): DSS is a computer-based application used to collect and analyze data for the purpose of presenting information in an easy way to make a better decision and solve business problems

Outlines of DSS

1. Helps in future predicting.

2. Supports decision in each phase of the decision process.

3. Helps to determine and solve problems.

The decision making process can be separated into four stages as shown in figure

Management information systems (MIS)

Management information systems (MIS): The structure of MIS consists of three essential components specified as management, information, and systems, which all connected for the purpose of supporting the entire organization parts by the information. Hence, MIS is defined as a system that provides the information for decision making by using organization databases

Outlines of MIS

1. Makes information available for all the levels in the organization.

2. Provides information for decision making.

3. Helps to analyze and solve problems.

4. MIS plays an important role in the organization by the functions and procedures that are performed at the entire levels in the organization.

5. Helps in sett

Transaction processing systems (TPS)

Transaction processing systems (TPS): TPS is a system located at the low level at the information systems pyramid. TPS is used for gathering, organizing, and storing the data transactions of the organization and make it ready to use by the other information systems in the organization.

Outlines of TPS

1. Supports all the systems in the organization by the information.

2. Collets the data from the internal and external sources.

3. Used by operational personnel and supervisory levels.

WHY MIS?

MIS plays a vital role in the organization environment due to its responsibility to receive the data from different database resources including the external and internal sources and convert them to useful information for different types and levels in the organization.

Due to the critical position of MIS at the middle of administrative pyramid, the whole system is considered a connection link between the high and low level management, therefore the information flows from the top to bottom and vice versa. The information achieves by the MIS to determine the time and the types, which are the part that must be available to be used by the other information systems.

MIS helps in policy making such as the strategic and tactic policies and enhances the performance, planning, decision making process, choosing among alterative and quality control. Hereby MIS adds a competition value for the organization. The following figure shows how the MIS consider a connection link between the other types of information systems and data sources:

Based on the discussion above, MIS is considered as the key reason to success the performance of the information systems; therefore a successful MIS is realized by preparing a suitable environment to work properly, such as software, hardware and people, which all are the factors that have a direct effect on the performance of MIS.

Quality of Information

Information is a vital resource for the success of any organization. Future of an organization lies in using and disseminating information wisely. Good quality information placed in right context in right time tells us about opportunities and problems well in advance.

Good quality information − Quality is a value that would vary according to the users and uses of the information.

According to Wang and Strong, following are the dimensions or elements of Information Quality −

·Intrinsic − Accuracy, Objectivity, Believability, Reputation

·Contextual − Relevancy, Value-Added, Timeliness, Completeness, Amount of information

·Representational − Interpretability, Format, Coherence, Compatibility

·Accessibility − Accessibility, Access security

Various authors propose various lists of metrics for assessing the quality of information. Let us generate a list of the most essential characteristic features for information quality –

• • Reliability − It should be verifiable and dependable.

  • Timely − It must be current and it must reach the users well in time, so that important decisions can be made in time.

  • Relevant − It should be current and valid information and it should reduce uncertainties.

  • Accurate − It should be free of errors and mistakes, true, and not deceptive.

  • Sufficient − It should be adequate in quantity, so that decisions can be made on its basis.

  • Unambiguous − It should be expressed in clear terms. In other words, in should be comprehensive.

  • Complete − It should meet all the needs in the current context.

  • Unbiased − It should be impartial, free from any bias. In other words, it should have integrity.

  • Explicit − It should not need any further explanation.

  • Comparable − It should be of uniform collection, analysis, content, and format.

  • Reproducible − It could be used by documented methods on the same data set to achieve a consistent result.

Resources of Information/Data Collection Techniques

The most popular data collection techniques include −

• Surveys − A questionnaires is prepared to collect the data from the field.

• Secondary data sources or archival data: Data is collected through old records, magazines, company website etc.

• Objective measures or tests − An experimental test is conducted on the subject and the data is collected.

• Interviews − Data is collected by the system analyst by following a rigid procedure and collecting the answers to a set of Pre-conceived questions through personal interviews

Executive Support System

Executive support systems are intended to be used by the senior managers directly to provide support to non-programmed decisions in strategic management.

These information are often external, unstructured and even uncertain. Exact scope and context of such information is often not known beforehand.

This information is intelligence based −

• Market intelligence

• Investment intelligence

• Technology intelligence

Examples of Intelligent Information-Following are some examples of intelligent information, which is often the source of an ESS −

• External databases

• Technology reports like patent records etc.

• Technical reports from consultants

• Market reports

• Confidential information about competitors

• Speculative information like market conditions

• Government policies

• Financial reports and information

Features of Executive Information System

Advantages of ESS

• • Easy for upper level executive to use

  • Ability to analyze trends

  • Augmentation of managers' leadership capabilities

  • Enhance personal thinking and decision-making

  • Contribution to strategic control flexibility

  • Enhance organizational competitiveness in the market place

  • Instruments of change

  • Increased executive time horizons.

  • Better reporting system

  • Improved mental model of business executive

  • Help improve consensus building and communication

  • Improve office automation

  • Reduce time for finding information

  • Early identification of company performance

  • Detail examination of critical success factor

  • Better understanding

  • Time management

  • Increased communication capacity and quality

Disadvantage of ESS

• Functions are limited

• Hard to quantify benefits

• Executive may encounter information overload

• System may become slow

• Difficult to keep current data

• May lead to less reliable and insecure data

• Excessive cost for small company

Decision Support System(DSS)