A Hospital Information System (HIS) refers to a component of health informatics that focuses particularly on the administrational needs of the hospital including the management of aspects such as medical, financial, legal issues and processing of related services, and many more. It is also called as hospital management software (HMS) or hospital management system.
It is responsible for keeping information about the patient’s health history with confidentiality. Also, the health care professionals coordinate for the care that is to be provided to the patient through this as it enables the internal and external communication among health care professionals. Besides, portable devices such as smart-phones and tablet computers can also be used.
Some of the examples of hospital information system in the USA include:
· Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and Electronic Health Record (EHR) both terms can be used interchangeably. This helps to record the client’s medical history in the electronic version instead of paperwork. The data recorded in this can also be shared with other health care providers by electronic means so which gives them access too about the patient’s healthcare data.
· Practice management software assists the health workers to run the daily operations i.e. scheduling and billing. It is also used to automate the other required administrative tasks by the healthcare providers.
· A master patient index ensures that each patient record is maintained who is registered at the healthcare organization along with the other indexes carrying records of the patient. Thus, it reduces the duplication of patient records hence inaccurate information which can lead to claim denials.
· Patient portals are specially designed for the patients so that they too have access to their data such as appointment information, medications, and laboratory results over an internet connection. There are types of patient portals too that allow active communication between patients and physicians, prescription refill requests, and the ability to schedule appointments.
· Remote patient monitoring/ Telehealth with the help of medical sensors send patient data to healthcare professionals. It frequently monitors blood glucose levels and blood pressure for patients with chronic medical conditions. Based on the data received, the physicians formulate interventions that are required for any suspected medical event and can become a part of a larger population health study also. The data is used to detect medical events that require intervention and can become part of a larger population health study.
· Clinical Decision Support (CDS) helps to analyze data from different clinical and administrative systems and thus contribute to health workers for making clinical decisions. It can also help in diagnosis and medical events prediction like drug interactions. Besides, this can filter data and information to help clinicians to the acre for individual patients.
BENEFITS OF Hospital INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Potential benefits of hospital information systems include:
· Hospital growth- administration of finance, the diet of the patient, engineering, and distribution of medical aid are organized efficiently and accurately.
· Appropriate pharmaceutical utilization- improved monitoring of drug usage, observing for effectiveness thereby, leading to the reduction of adverse drug interactions while promoting more appropriate pharmaceutical utilization.
· Prevents duplication of records, transcription errors, and promotes information integrity.
· Reduction in errors caused by handwriting by easy to use Hospital software (new technology computer systems help to pull up information from server or cloud servers appropriately).
· Everyone has an opportunity to utilize the healthcare systems from patients to clinicians to public health officials. Apart from this, data can be compiled here to make healthcare decisions too.
