Strategic Information Systems 10: Electronic Medical Records Report

This report delves into the realm of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) systems within the healthcare sector, focusing on their strategic importance and operational requirements. It begins by establishing the business background, emphasizing the Australian Ministry of Health's initiatives to enhance healthcare quality through Telehealth projects, where EMR plays a pivotal role in securely storing patient medical records. The report defines EMR as a real-time, patient-driven information resource that aids medical practitioners in making informed decisions and streamlining workflows. It then outlines essential business requirements for EMR implementation, including secure access, reliability, and integration with healthcare processes. The document categorizes EMR requirements into functional and non-functional aspects and specifies system requirements such as data summarization, report generation, and access control. Furthermore, it presents the EMR system requirements, functionalities, and classification of requirements, and provides guidance on software and vendor selection for healthcare organizations aiming to implement or enhance their EMR systems.

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Information Systems for Electronic Medical Records
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Business Background Information
The quality of healthcare has become one of the essential elements of the Ministry of
Health (MOH) in Australia for very many years (De Moor et al., 2015, p. 163). The most
core actions that are being undertaken by the MOH is to expound the health quality in
Australia using a Telehealth project. Therefore, the Telehealth system is supposed to
comprise following key components lifetime health plan (LHP), continuous medical
education (CME), health information and education (HIE) and Teleconsultation. With the
provided business components, Electrical Medical Records System (EMR) plays a significant
responsibility in making sure that patients past medical records are well and securely stored
(Ravindra, Chandra, and Dhenesh, 2018). Despite the fact that even at the moment some
elements under the Telehealth projects in Australia exist and are readily accessible over the
internet, the problem is that they have not yet been into implementation. Accordingly,
Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is defined as a safe real-time point-of-care patient-driven
information resource for medical practitioners (Zhang, Qiu, Tsai, Hassan, and Alamri, 2017,
p. 89). The EMR is a useful resource in healthcare sector since it is used to help practitioners
in deciding clients by allowing them to gain quick access to patient’s medical records at the
time of need (Furukawa et al., 2014, p. 1674). In addition to the real-time evidence-based
support, EMR helps to automate as well as streamline the practitioner’s flow of work, closing
loops in communication and response that is likely to lead into delays or openings in the care
process (Friend, Jennings, and Levine, 2017, p. 22). On a similar note, EMR enhances the
gathering of data for use and other related clinical care like quality management, billing,
resource planning, outcome reporting, and health disease surveillance (Hollenbeck, Bomar,
Wenger, and Yaszay, 2017, p. 425).
Therefore, a health organization in Australia are striving to see to it that Telehealth
becomes active as it is the expectation of healthcare providers. Consequently, the effort by

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health organizations pushing for the use of information technology (IT) in the health sector is
to ensure that it achieves the perspective of patients gaining access to care at any place
instead of being forced to travel to their registered care (West, Borland, and Hammond,
2014). As a result of using Electronic Medical Records in the admission of healthcare
services in Australian hospitals, it would greatly help to reduce the hassle and tussle that id
faced by most patients in Australia who have before suffered challenges regarding receiving
medical services from healthcare facilities they are not registered.
Essential Business Requirements
The demands of the healthcare sector in Australia is recommending the use of EMR
implementation in all local, regional and national healthcare organizations because of various
reason. The most key requirement being to make sure that as a country it stands a better
position to ensure that the health of its citizens comes first.
Offer secure, dependable and real-time access to patient health record information
when and when it is required for the support of care
Therefore, some of the highly important requirement here include to provide tools and
equipment such as audit trails, to guarantee patient clinical information confidentiality as
safety (Ginsberg, 2017). The systems should be accessible and reliable such that it should be
capable of running 24 hours in a day, seven days, in a month and all year round. Similarly,
the system should be highly responsive and able to integrate with the healthcare flow of
work. On the same note, it should be readily accessible whereby it has to support ambulatory
care sections and inpatient as well as remote access.
The systems should be able to capture longitudinal and episodic electronic
medical record information
In this case, the most vital requirements include

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i. The system has to make checks of he the captured information for purposes of
rationality and provide time stamps, sources of information, in addition to
modifications audit track.
ii. It has to comply with the set healthcare standard for message and vocabulary content.
iii. The system has to accept information from external systems and automated data
capture instruments like laboratory analysis equipment, patient monitors as well as
barcode scanners (Hodgkins, 2018).
iv. It should be able to ideally accept and integrate medical report information external
from the immediate organization such as medication dispensing information from
local pharmacies.
v. The system has to provide unique tools for identification of patient information
integration among different systems and environments minus a common patient
identifier.
vi. It should allow for efficient data entry of all orders as well as documentation by
certified practitioners, which comprise refill and prescription management. Also, it
should perfectly support a range of clinical entry such as pointer devices, voice and
handwriting recognition and keyboard.
vii. Furthermore, the system is supposed to allow for electronic signature where legally
allowed by the government.
viii. The system has to accept patient self-reported health information.
ix. The application is supposed to perfectly differentiate between patients past data
applicable across visits and range of care versus episodic data applicable to a single
visit such as breathing sounds from the previous assessment.

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x. Lastly but not least, the application should allow for copying and paste data to allow
for easy data forwarding to guarantee continuous care support, accurate order making
as well as the efficiency of medical documentation.
The EMR application should operate as the practitioner’s main source of information
at the time of providing care to the patient
In this context the most significant requirements:
i. It has to able to keep a list of patient problems, their past health records, and physical
exam, immunizations, orders, medications administered and dispensed, diagnostic
results as well as images.
ii. The application has to allow entry into patient information required with integrated
assessments, abating of information external the normal restriction.
iii. The application should offer access tools as well as display which can be tailored to
the specialty and customized to the final user inclinations. Ideally, it should give
problem, disease and patient circumstance integrated views.
iv. In the case of recurrent episodes, the system has to offer access to relevant previous
information.
v. The application should organize and highlight patient-related communications like
diagnostic results, messages and support management communication till resolution.
vi. Also, the EMR information should also include progressive visit, nursing, consult
documentation, as well a patient functional condition in a coded form.

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Figure 1. The EMR application acts as the practitioner’s main source of information at the
time of providing care to the patient
ERM System Requirements
Currently, EMR is described as one of the most excellent digital types of patient’s
part graphic representation, which offers an instant, secure and real-time access to the
longitudinal record of the patient health data generated by either a single encounter or more
in the ant healthcare service delivery environment. Apart from only the EMR working as a
database of clinical information regarding the patient because of the medical records that it
keeps such as past medical history, vital signs, medications, progress notes, immunizations,
allergies, radiology reports, laboratory results, billing information and patient demographics
among many others EMR serves other functionalities in the organization. Some of these
functionalities include support for patient self-management, medical decision support,

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education and research, place of work policies and process support, as well as populace
health management (Moja et al., 2014). Therefore, EMR has different implementations of the
above-stated functions. Thus it can be utilized in a range of scopes or structures to interface
with the system which expounds its functionality like imaging information system, laboratory
information system only but to mention a few.
Figure 2. Electronic Medical Records Model
Requirements
In this case, requirements directly refer to the services which a product like a software
model is supposed to provide in addition to the constraints in which it should maneuver
(Jones, Rudin, Perry, and Shekelle, 2014, p. 50). As a result, there is some features,
capabilities, attributes, and qualities that the software application need to contain in order for

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it to be of value to the user, organization and any other form of stakeholder. These system
requirements are influenced specifically by the customer’s likes, prejudice as well as dislikes
and organizational subject matters. The understanding and elicitation of the user need and
requirements are one of the core elements of any successful success project specifically under
computer software development. Accordingly, this makes it possible for the development of a
product which is acceptable and satisfying to the client or that achieve the needs are
requirements of the business.
Classification of EMR Requirements
In the case of this paper, the EMR requirements are categorized into two main classes
that are functional requirements and non-functional requirements. On the side of functional
requirements, it describes how the system is capable of performing its functions, and its
components have to explicitly feature the needs and functionalities of the end user for the
system to be said that it is effective to its work and operations. Therefore, functional
requirements are directly related to and are derived from the objectives or responsibilities the
that end user expects to attain like in the case of EMR the capture, storage, and retrieval of
patient medical history, support for clinical decisions together with prescription, supporting
education and research findings, reminders of appointments and diagnostics among others
(Maillet, Mathieu, and Sicotte, 2015, p. 41). On the other hand, the non-functional
requirements describe what the software model should look like, or it specifies the criteria
used to judge the application. The non-functional requirements include matter related to
quality attributes the software model like security, stability, usability, maintainability and
many others (Krousel-Wood et al., 2017). These requirements tend to be much general for
the entire system. There are the requirements that the system is supposed to be so that to
attain the frictional requirements. For instance, in order to have a proper and secure as well as
retrievable medical records, the software application has to be built with a backup database,

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have a high resolution and connectivity speed with the database server in addition to security
mechanism the enhances high database integrity.
EMR system Requirement Specification
Some of the core system requirements that the system is supposed to achieve include:
 During the last working day of every month, the system will be required to provide a
summary of the medication prescription administered to patients, their costs as well as
the generation of prescribing doctors during that period.
 The software model will automatically generate each month’s medical report for
printing after 11.59 pm on the last working date of every month.
 The medical report shall be created for each department and provide a list of the
specific drugs by name, the total prescription number, the total cost of the prescribed
drugs, as well as the dosage, prescribe with the period one month.
 The access to all patient records shall be solely restricted to the authorized user that as
health practitioners as outlined by the management of the healthcare organization
access control list.

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Figure 3. Shows how EMR can be connected using a cell phone
On the other hand, provides another approach to classifying EMR requirements as
system requirement and customer requirements. The classification is found on the
abstraction such that the user refined requirements are non-representational proclamations
of the services that the system is anticipated to offer to the user, the limitations under
which it has to run, while system requirements consists expansive, detailed, low-level
description of the application’s services, functions, as well as operational constraints and
the description what is to be exactly executed by the model.
Software and Vendor Selection
In order to become an outstanding healthcare organization the best way to approach
the EMR vendor, the business ought to have an open mind and should have a clear

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understanding of its goals, as well as the desire to look at their software vendor like a partner.
Accordingly, in this case, the healthcare organization is supposed to focus on the tangible
business results, which means enhanced resource usage and better time delivery of service to
clients.
Practices for EMR Software Selection
When it comes to selection of electronic medical record (EMR) or any other enterprise
application model, this is one of the most significant decision that a healthcare organization
should make. The new application software is responsible for a myriad of responsibilities
such patient, clinical, financial information as well as operational information which has a big
impact on the corporation and its clinicians as a whole. Therefore the matter of selecting the
software should be taken with a lot of concern because it is a critical part as far as the
operation of any enterprise is concerned. Certainly, research has shown that companies that
invest in a methodical selection course considerably decline the risks of common issues like
lack of medical buy-in, budget overage, lack of critical software functionality and failure to
attain a business target. As a result, a well thought out disciplined methodology can offer
objective analysis concerning the dissimilarity between solutions and how they best suit the
healthcare facility’s requirements. Indeed, this approach can support the business to be able
to determine the feasibility of different options. Similarly, selection of the software helps to
avoid cases of working with emotions and allow work from a real substance of a solution to
make sure that sound decisions are made.
Software Selection Process
Define the Enterprise Requirements: To be in a better place to identify and evaluate
appropriate solutions the health organization will have to ensure that it has clearly understood
its needs and wants (Haidar et al., 2017. P. 21). Similarly, the organization should seek a fit

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with the vendor regarding on having a similar outlook towards the business, in the case of
focus on agility, proactive attitude as well as transparent and prompt communication.
Therefore, the healthcare organization should strive to make sure that the EMR software
defines the facilities and not designing the system which has become a common mistake
amongst enterprise vendors. That is to mean that the health care firm should ensure that it
clarify its need to see to it that the software vendor becomes capable of not only fulfilling the
technical requirements but also identify special requirements for the healthcare. Thus, such an
opportunity enables the software vendor to design the software in the most appropriate
manner.
Reconciliation of the process conformity with flexibility: In the modern world, many
businesses are finding themselves at a crossroad of an extremely volatile business setting. In
such a case, the specification of explicit requirements for an inherently inflexible software
application as a challenging task (Wu, Chiu, Yeh, and Wang, 2017, 33). Since the process of
requirement collection entails both functional and non-functional requirements, the most
appropriate approach is to make sure that that the process of requirements collection is
simple, during the initial phase so as to have the essential structure correctly and delve into
the details at a later date, together with an inbuilt flexibility into the structure. A complete
task may take quite a lot of time alongside with skills and effort put together (Xu, Da Xu,
Cai, Xie, Hu, and Bu, 2014, p. 1579). Once all the business requirements have been clarified
the vendor is now ready to go on and delve into the details of the system because these
requirements translate the vendor into becoming competent both in the technical front as well
as compliance to the industry’s best practices and quality standards. The business should
clarify the expectations on the feature list by drawing up the list of vital features that the
software needs to accomplish.