case Study – Information systems for a medical centre

HealthCo Medical Services (HCMS) is an organisation that caters for a broad range of health care needs through its medical centres, located across Orlandia (a hypothetical country in the southern hemisphere). The goal of the doctors and staff at HCMS is to provide the best medical care for patients incorporating best practice principles, up to date knowledge and technological advances.

HCMS has been asked to locate a new medical centre near the new public hospital planned for a regional centre in Orlandia. The medical centre is to provide the following services:

 GP (general practitioner) walk in (i.e. no reservations required) during normal opening hours (7am – 7 pm)

 GP after hours (7pm – 7am) (reservations required)

 Pathology (9am – 5pm)

 Radiography (e.g. x-rays).

Standard appointments are recorded in 10 or 15 minute intervals, but longer appointments can be requested on arrival.

The centre will have 10 doctors (5 female, 5 male) who can be rostered on as required and supporting staff of nurses, pathologists, radiographers and office administrators. In addition, an interface to the hospital will allow patients to transfer between the medical clinic and the hospital as required.

The medical centre requires information systems of different types such that:

 A patient does not wait longer than 1 hour to see a doctor

 Automatic management of patient flows occurs within the medical centre and from the medical centre to the hospital

 Real-time information assists health professionals with “in the moment” decisionmaking

 Resources are optimised ahead of time based on predictive data analysis that is accurate up to weeks in advance, based on community or seasonal characteristics (e.g. outbreak of a flu; start of winter; special events such as “Leavers” week). Doctors and administrators will be able to plan for future patient presentations and accurately predict demand in advance. You have been appointed by HCMS to prepare a report to answer the following question: What will this medical centre look like, once the full potential of the information systems technology is harnessed?

The particular features that you need to address in the report are detailed in the following sections

Section 1

This section asks you to describe the information systems that could apply to the HCMS medical centre. The medical centre expects to apply different types of information systems (e.g. TPS, MIS etc). You should:

a. Outline several different information systems that HCMS will need. Explain how each will be used, what general type it belongs to, and how it would benefit the centre.

b. Suggest a dashboard that could assist in the efficient operation of the medical centre.

c. The centre is expected to have a social media presence. Suggest a range of appropriate social media, explaining how they would be used.

Section 2

HCMS have asked you to discuss approaches to acquiring the appropriate information systems as described in Section 1.

a. Summarise the strategies that could be appropriate for acquiring these systems.

b. Develop a set of evaluation criteria for two of the strategies which might be appropriate for this project. Use these criteria to create an evaluation matrix.

c. Make a recommendation for which strategy should be used to acquire the information systems, based on the approaches discussed, and the evaluation matrix developed.

Section 3

HCMS have asked you to make recommendations for an IS department (of 2-3 people) to manage the systems acquired.

a. What responsibilities would the IS department hold for the medical centre?

b. What job profiles would be most appropriate to ensure these responsibilities are covered?

Section 4

HCMS is dedicated to confidentiality and privacy of health information. It is the policy of HCMS to maintain security of personal health information at all times and to ensure that this information is only available to authorised members of the staff.

a. You are asked to draft guidelines for a code of professional practice for the IS department (the medical staff already are covered by an appropriate code of ethics and professional practice). This guideline document should be an appendix to the report. In the main report you should discuss:

b. What are the mandatory clauses in the guidelines, and why they are mandatory.

c. Any optional clauses that may be applicable.

Your assignment should be presented in the form of a report to HCMS, structured around the sections listed. In addition to the four main sections, the report will have an introduction, conclusion, bibliography (all the material you have referenced or consulted in preparing the report), and the appendix setting out the proposed guidelines for a code of professional practice. There is no particular word count but you should aim for a good coverage of the relevant issues, concisely presented. Remember to state any assumptions that you make

NOTE: Since the assignment is long, you can take time in doing it. Try to keep plagiarism ratio as low as possible.