Hospital Information System

An ideal hospital information system design should be focused on integration of clinical as well as financial and administrative applications.

At present time, most systems are Financial Information Systems (FIS), some are Management Information Systems (MIS), and some Hospital Information Systems combine FIS and MIS. In order to improve hospital services in a time-efficient and cost-effective manner, both FIS and MIS must be linked to a Clinical Information Systems (CIS). This system is centered around patients and clinical processes and consists of: ward-related Nursing Information Systems (NIS), and the non-ward Departmental Information Systems (DIS). Examples of DIS are Radiology Information Systems (RIS), and Pharmacy Information Systems (PIS). With such synergy, the key issue is the integration of digital data so that the authorized personnel can retrieve necessary information anywhere and anytime they need it. The required data are usually different in nature and are called multimedia data. To review a patient's record the healthcare provider may need to look at radiographic images, listen to voice data with video sequence and live signals (intensive care scenario), and read the notes of other physicians. It is in this context when there is also a need for integration of HIS with Integrated Digital Medical Records (IDMR) and other advance information systems such as Picture Archiving Communication System (PACS) and Document Information Systems (Doc IS) to handle massive amounts of multimedia data. In Summary, in an ideal situation IDMR would be the center of Hospital Information System, and the presentation of various categories of essential data would be an automatic function geared to the needs of an authorizes user.