ICT in Developing the Saudi Health - Research Proposal Example

DEVELOPING SAUDI HEALTH USING ICT BY STUDENT NUMBER SUPERVISED BY A TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH PROPOSAL SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER COMPUTER SCIENCE SCHOOL OF May 2011 Table of Contents May 2011 i Table of Contents ii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Background of the study 2 1.2 Statement of the problem 2 1.3 Research objectives 3 1.4 Beneficiaries of the project 3 1.5 Societal vision of the organization 4 1.6 Expected long term and short term outcomes 4 1.7 How the project relates to core units of the programme 6 1.7 Problems which will be solved 6 References 9 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION As the world is attacked my pandemics, which are in epic proportions, many people in the world are affected by diseases, which have no cures like HIV/AIDS, multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, and malaria. Most of these afflictions are experienced in developing countries. The prevention will be hard and difficult to overcome. The management of information systems has been done with simple spreadsheets or with poorly designed databases; this can be attributed to lack of money, developers, or time (Rick, 2006). These reasons are not valid enough to leave the management of medical records unattended. To help them, there has been concern by the developers and medical practitioners to develop programs that will be used to handle the sensitive and important data. This has helped eradicate duplicates (Young-Hoon Kwak, 2005). As a response to this, there has been an effort to develop open source applications that will be used to efficiently manage the data. This has been a tide, which raises all ships. Organizations, which are known in medical informatics research. The project will cover areas of how Saudi Heath can be improved using ICT. It will research on the requirements, features and functionalities of major electronic health records. These records are used in academic medical centers (academic medical center). Academic medical centers are among the first users and implementers of electronic medical records. This report will find its use in governments and private practice personnel. They have been among the active crusaders in the search for better data management solutions and better use of technology in health centers. Electronic records are not longitudinal scale. Records, which are longitudinal, are kept in regional or national information systems (Margaret, 2006). Therefore, electronic health records that are customized for a particular application or reside in other health care delivery venues are not reviewed in this document. 1.1 Background of the study The client for this project is Saudi Health. The main aim of the entity, Saudi Health, l is to be able to improve service delivery in all public hospitals in Saudi Arabia. There will be need to have a common system that will have data from the various hospitals and be able to have an efficient data public hospitals are integrated well to suit the needs of all interested parties. One of the needs of the desired information systems is that it should be able to cater for the following functionalities: Increasing the doctor’s and administrator’s interactivity Supporting the nurses in participating in the whole process of treatment. Improving the data management of the whole system. All the branches of the hospital should be able to access to the whole system of the whole hospital. This way, data management will be managed well. Every organization strives to have integrated management systems, Saudi Health is no exception. 1.2 Statement of the problem The main aim of this research is to find out ways in which Saudi Health will tap ICT to improve services. Now, Saudi Health requires that the nurses complete the forms, which are used for diagnosis. The doctors are also required to fill in the forms to show the updates of what they suggest for the patients (Murphy, Hanken, Waters, 1999). These forms are updated and shown to the administrators who will then have some information on what the patients they handle were suffering from. The various branches have different platforms and information systems; this means that it is very hard to have effective communication and integration data from these disparate systems. It is due to this that there is need to have a better way of handling the process (Joseph, 2003). 1.3 Research objectives 1. To find out ways of using ICT to improve service delivery in Saudi Health. 2. To find out the benefits and the ease of use that the proposed solutions will have in the project. 3. To find out the success that other systems have had in their quest to improve their services using ICT. The research will investigate similar health institutions to find out how successful they have been. 1.4 Beneficiaries of the project There are many beneficiaries for this research and include government regulators, Saudi Health, other health institution, researchers, academia, and investors. The government regulators will stand to benefit from this research. This is because the research and the suggestions that are found in the research will be used to improve the service delivery in other sectors. The government will make use of this research to inject reforms in other institutions of health in Saudi Arabia (Mitchell, 2009). The research will also help Saudi Health a great deal as it will help to expose faults in their current process if service delivery. If the fault is solved on time, then it will have helped to solve many unseen problems and help to improve the service delivery. 1.5 Societal vision of the organization It is expected that the process of service delivery for the health institution is reliable. The society looks at health institutions as source of health fitness and wellness. It is therefore the duty of Saudi Health to ensure that service delivery is optimized. The use of ICT will make the institution to realize this vision. ICT simplifies the processes that are followed in the healing process. 1.6 Expected long term and short term outcomes To reduce the long process of opening files, writing the files, updating and reporting to the administrators, Saudi Health will integrate information systems that will be used to get all the processes from system (Poissant et al., 2005). This way they will be able to have one view of the systems of all the existing and potential branches that will either be acquired or created from scratch in future. The new system will help Saudi Health to achieve the processes that are outlined below: Coming up with a database (this would make it easier and faster to track the updates of the various instances that the patient will have with both the nurses and the doctors). The database will handle all the encounters of the patient. Every encounter will be recorded in the database. All observations that the doctor will have with the patient will also be recorded in the database (Young-Hoon, 2005). There will be the creation of a one patient encounter management system where all the encounters that the patient will have with the hospital personnel will be handled. This will be possible with the use of smart cards, which are already rolled in the pharmacy of the same hospital. These cards will contain the information of the patients and that every time the patient visits the hospital; they will carry with them the card. This will help the various departments and branches that the patient may be required to visit to better manage the patient data. The patient will not have to visit the initial encounter. The system will have all the encounters with the patients (Harrison, & Lock, 2004). With the use of smart cards, the whole organization will be in a position to manage all the encounters that the patient will have with the hospital. The Saudi Health institution will have one system where the patient management will be handled anywhere the patient feels they are comfortable visiting. Reducing the failing rate as the failure in receiving reports by the administrators will end. There will be the reduction of costs that have been brought about by printing, buying files and sending emails to doctors. Reducing paperwork. 1.7 How the project relates to core units of the programme One of the main aims of this research will be to realize the need to have the efficient and reliable information systems in Saudi Health so that the service delivery is effected. There will be the use of project management methodologies. Project management methodologies will have to be used so that the project comes out successful. 1.7 Problems which will be solved Now, the Saudi Health requires that the nurses complete the forms, which are used for diagnosis. The doctors are also required to fill in the forms to show the updates of what they suggest for the patients. These forms are updated and shown to the administrators who will then have some information on what the patients they handle were suffering from. The various branches have different platforms and information systems; this means that it is very hard to have effective communication and integration data from these disparate systems. It is due to this that there is need to have an integrated system that will take in the whole organization and take in the data. When a patient is received, the process of the system is as follows: The diagnosis is done by the nurses and doctors Results from the diagnosis are stored in the local systems. This is not usually the case as the nurses prefer using the manual systems so that they do not complicate the reporting process. They have to report to the administrators about the patients and the ailments they had. They will then have to inform the responsible doctors through the administrators. The administrators will have to assign patients to the doctors, rather manually. The assigning is done manually and also informing the concerned doctors is done using phone calls and emails. The doctors will come and get the details about the particular patient and the ailment they have. They give the nurses the results so that it be typed and presented to the administrators. The doctors will keep on updating the status manually every time the client visits. There are files, which are assigned to every new patient to the hospital. This process is rather tiresome. As is evidenced in the process above this will go on in all the branches that the hospital has. There are doctors who serve in more than one branch. This will mean that they will have to update files in all the branches that they serve. The long and tiring process will be solved in the end. Conclusion Even though information technology is fast being adopted by many as a very important and significant role in businesses, it is one of the least understood and least valued assets of a company. Organizations, which are considered successful, manage their IT function in much the same way they manage their strategic functions and processes. What this means is that they understand the quality and the measure of the IT function in their company. To be successful, these companies engage the use of IT governance and auditing activities that entail IT. With the analysis that has been done above, it meets the requirements of the hospital. The project can be described as feasible and the hospital should go ahead with the implementation of the system. With the use of information systems, the hospital will stand to benefit from this venture. References Harrison, D., & Lock, J. (2004). Advanced project management: a structured approach‎. Illinois: Gower Publishing, Ltd. Joseph, P. (2003). PMP Project Management Professional Study Guide. Columbia: McGraw-Hill Professional. Margaret (Mimi) H. (2006). Case Study: Factors in Defining the Nurse Informatics Specialist Role. Journal of the Health Information Systems Society, Spring Vol. 20, Issue 2, p 30. Mitchell, B. (2009). VPN Tutorial. Retrieved on March 19th, 2011 from http://compnetworking.about.com/od/vpn/a/vpn_tutorial.htm Murphy, F., Hanken, M., & Waters, K. (1999). Electronic health records: changing the vision. W. B. Saunders. Poissant, L., Pereira, J., Tamblyn, T., & Kawasumi, Y. (2005). “The impact of electronic health records on time efficiency of physicians and nurses: A systematic review.” Journal of American Medical Informatics Association. Rick Krohn (2006). “Technology – How Healthcare IT Can Address the Nursing Shortage,” Journal of the Health Information Management, Spring. Volume 20, Issue 2, p. 21. Young-Hoon Kwak (2005). A brief history of Project Management: The story of managing projects. 2 (3). Read More