Healthcare Information Technology

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Part 1

The proposed solution is Putty Health V.2 system to be used for management of data in the whole process at UMUC family clinic. This system is expected to improve patient admission in the healthcare process. The improvement of patient admission process will take place in terms of efficiency enhancement in the admission, significant reduction in the total time to be taken for admission as well as accuracy achievement in identifying the patient. The process improvement using this system will also reduce the workload of the records personnel. In other words, the Putty Health V.2 system will improve requirements together with other issues that may be essential.

The hardware devices that will be needed include desktop computers with at least 2 GHz of processor, 2GB RAM, and 40 GB of disk storage space. In addition, the system will also require wireless devices to allow the connection to the network by users of UMUC clinic and for the purpose of data synchronization. Routers will be required to permit connectivity of devices for mobile to the network. The software needed include windows operating system together with Linux plat form of operating system in addition to Mac OS systems. The Android and Windows Mobile operating system will also be needed for the support of mobile computing aspects to allow users to access the system by means of mobile devices which are also part of hardware devices required. Both the server and the client software will also be needed respectively.

There are various areas of system consideration. Each area of consideration is rated as high, medium, low or not applicable depending on the level of importance. The respective areas of consideration are thus listed, rated and explained in the Table of considerations that is shown in part 2 bellow.

Part 2

Table of Considerations

Area High/Medium

/Low

Importance

or Relevance

or Not

Applicable

(N/A) Explanation for Ranking (linked to specific EHR

technology solution proposed)

IT- Operational Safeguards

1. Identity

Management &

Authorization High The health system will store sensitive record. Therefore, the authority to access these records will be granted to various staff at different levels.

2. Training

Programs Low Training will be required but mostly recommended as part and parcel of system development process. As a result less training will be required when the system is already in operation since users will have known most parts of the system during the development process (De Waal & Batenburg, 2012).

3. Continuity of

Operations High This is a major consideration because the system is not expected to fail during operations. Most functions to do with patients’ information service will rely on this system and hence it is highly needed.

4. Incident Procedures

medium This will allow quick recovery from any system downtime. However, it is rated medium because no major failure is expected after system implementation.

5. Accountability High The system will be dealing with patient’s sensitive information. Any user who uses this information or even try to illegally disclose them must be accountable for their action.

6. Risk Assessment Low The risk can take place at any time in any sensitive system. The security of such system should be given higher priority. For this reason, the system analyst will be carrying out continuous assessment for risk detection. But because, the risk is not always expected, the consideration is rated low.

7. System Activity

Review N/A Once the system is implemented, the review process is expected to take place sometime in future. It is not an immediate requirement and thus is rated as not applicable.

IT –Architectural Safeguards

8. Reliability High The system should generate accurate information. In addition, it is not expected to fail frequently. Therefore high reliability is required for the required level of functionality to be achieved (AbuKhousa, Mohamed & Al-Jaroodi, 2012).

9. Availability medium The system will be connected to the network. The network services should thus be available all the time to users. However, all operations may not depend on the network availability and hence is rated medium (AbuKhousa, Mohamed & Al-Jaroodi, 2012).

10. Maintainability low Maintenance of a system is a continuous process. But the process of maintenance is not expected to be so serious and frequent immediately after implementation. For this reason, the consideration is rated low (AbuKhousa, Mohamed & Al-Jaroodi, 2012).

11. Scalability N/A This consideration is important but may not be necessary immediately after implementation. It will be necessary in future to scale the system in terms of processing speed, capacity of storage and other specifications as technology advances and as the system continues to grow (AbuKhousa, Mohamed & Al-Jaroodi, 2012).

12. Safety High This should be the first priority of the system such as this. This is because the patient’s sensitive data should be well protected from illegal access and disclosure according to the regulations of HIPAA (Williams & Schafer, 2014).

13. Cloud computing N/A This consideration is also necessary but can be incorporated in future. The system can as well function without it for a start.

IT Project Management Considerations

14. Project Resources

(Human, Financial) High Human resources are highly needed together with financial resources. The implementation of this system including any other system relies on the availability of both human and financial resources (Bamberger, Biron & Meshoulam, 2014).

15. Medical Paper Record

Migration High This is highly needed to help in the conversion of paper based health records in to electronic records. This conversion is required immediately after implementation to ensure quick accessibility of all past records.

16. Change Management

during

Implementation High This is highly needed to help UMUC medical clinic on how to manage the effects of change from the old paper based record into a new system. The effects can be observed by use of parallel running changeover which allows both the system to run for comparison purposes. Failure to effectively manage change at this stage can result to low quality system that is not user friendly (Foster, 2014).

17. Change Management

after Implementation N/A This consideration is not urgently needed once implementation has taken place. It is necessary for the future and hence rated not applicable.

IV. Legal, Ethical, and Regulatory Reporting Considerations

18. Business Associate

Contracts N/A This consideration is also not applicable at the time of implementation. As a result, it may only be necessary for future.

19 HIPAA High The HIPAA consideration is highly needed. This is because the system must meet all the legal, ethical and regulatory matters that govern electronic health system at the time of implementation.

V. Additional Consideration

20. User friendly High The consideration of user friendliness is highly needed. This is because the system must be acceptable to all users if it is to be considered successfully implemented (Hage et al., 2013)

References

Hage, E., Roo, J. P., van Offenbeek, M. A., & Boonstra, A. (2013). Implementation factors and their effect on e-Health service adoption in rural communities: a systematic literature review. BMC health services research, 13(1), 19.

Foster, E. C. (2014). Software Implementation Issues. In Software Engineering (pp. 291-300). Apress.Bamberger, P. A., Biron, M., & Meshoulam, I. (2014). Human resource strategy: Formulation, implementation, and impact. Routledge.Williams, J. R., & Schafer, M. F. (2014). HIPAA and Its Effect on Graduate Medical Education. The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery, 96(2), e13.

AbuKhousa, E., Mohamed, N., & Al-Jaroodi, J. (2012). e-Health cloud: opportunities and challenges. Future Internet, 4(3), 621-645.

De Waal, B. M., & Batenburg, R. (2012). What makes end-user training successful? A mixed method study of a business process management system implementation. International Journal of Knowledge and Learning, 8(1), 166-183.