Strategic Information Systems: Implementing EMR at Healthscope Limited

This report assesses how Healthscope Limited can improve its medical record management using the Centricity EMR Solution. It outlines Healthscope's business processes, including management, operational, and support activities, and details the composition of the Board of Directors. The report defines business requirements for Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Electronic Health Records (EHR), specifying functional and non-functional requirements, system design, performance, maintenance, and security needs. It recommends Centricity EMR, a GE Healthcare product, highlighting its benefits such as customization, enhanced collaboration, and improved patient care. The report also addresses potential security risks, such as data breaches, and provides mitigation guidelines. The conclusion emphasizes the strategic advantages of EMR implementation for Healthscope, including improved efficiency and patient care.

Strategic Information Systems
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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
1. Define business processes....................................................................................................................4
2. Develop business requirements............................................................................................................7
3. Determine the systems requirements...................................................................................................9
4. Software and vendor selection...........................................................................................................11
5. Determine at least three (3) ways which companies or organizations utilize such technologies to
improve business efficiency......................................................................................................................13
6. Evaluate the level of efficiency of the technology implementation...................................................15
7. Examine potential security risks, data breaches.................................................................................17
8. Provide guidelines on how these risks could be mitigated.................................................................19
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................21
References.................................................................................................................................................22
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Introduction
This report contains the ways in which Healthscope Limited will be able to enhance the
performance of recording and maintaining the medical records by using Centricity EMR
Solution. The report contains a brief explanation of the activities processes followed in
Healthscope and the list of Board of Directors has been illustrated. The business requirements
have been drafted along with enumerating the detailed software specification and suitable
software and vendor has been identified for procuring Centricity EMR System. In the last part,
the potential security risk that can be faced by the organisation has been analysed along with
listing the possible solutions for securing the data.
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1. Define business processes
Healthscope is an Australian firm dealing with providing healthcare services and it has over 45
hospitals across Australia providing medical and surgical, mental health, emergency, maternity,
and rehabilitation services to the patients. The organisation also manages three hospitals on
behalf of Adelaide Community Healthcare Alliance Group in South Australia. Healthscope also
has pathology operations in Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, and New Zealand. Healthscope
International Pathology is the largest pathology services provider to the District Health Boards
and provides veterinary pathology throughout New Zealand. In Malaysia and Singapore, it is one
of the leading community pathology providers, however, the operations in Vietnam is relatively
smaller when compared with other three locations (Healthscope, 2018).
The business processes followed in Healthscope Limited can be differentiated based on the
nature of activity performed and these are management, operational, and support processes.
Management process: The management process involves taking important decisions related to
the operations and these decisions are taken by the Board of Directors. They are responsible for
taking vital decisions and communicate important decisions to shareholders and stakeholders.
The leadership committee consists of general managers who develop strategies for achieving the
targets set by the top management and provide valuable suggestions to the Board related to the
performance of various activities (Foshay and Kuziemsky, 2014).
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Figure 1: Board of Directors
Source: (Healthscope, 2017).
Operational Process: The organisation has its operations across Australia and provides multi-
disciplinary healthcare services ranging from acute care to mental health and rehabilitation
services. The hospitals provide high-quality medical services by hiring Accredited Medical
Practitioners and specialist nurses which enables to maintain the quality of the services
throughout the operations. The hospitals are accredited under the National Health and Quality
Health Services Standards and thrive for providing exceptional care services and outperform the
expectations of the patients and their families. The organisation collaborates with public
institutions such as District Health Boards of New Zealand for providing pathology services.
Hence, the organisation has been able to enhance the revenues and ability to establish its centres
in foreign markets.
Support Processes: These do not form the core processes but enables Healthscope Limited for
performing the main activities. These include human resource, IT, finance, and admin which are
vital for any firm since they provide the necessary assistance for the smooth functioning of the
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core activities. The functions of finance department are to record and maintain the billing details
and generate various reports which are used by the management for taking business decisions.
The HR department performs activities such as recruitment and selection, providing training, and
designing employee-welfare policies. IT is concerned with designing and developing the
required IT infrastructure for performing various tasks effectively (Ward, et. al., 2014).
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2. Develop business requirements
Business requirements are the statements which contain the details regarding the functions which
are to be performed and the characteristics that the solution should have. The purpose of defining
the business requirements of Healthscope can be evaluated as:
 Help the management to develop IT infrastructure.
 Compares the IT products offered by different vendors
 Validate costs related to developing IT infrastructure
The use of technology for maintaining the records of the patients enables the physicians to
provide appropriate diagnosis since they will be able to maintain a medical history of the patients
(Ide, et. al., 2014).
The business requirements of Healthscope Limited for developing Electronic Medical Records
(EMR) and Electronic Health Records (EHR) are:
Functional Requirements:
Type Requirement Priority
Database Recording and
maintaining health
records
High
Database Display the current
diagnosis (Klein,
2017).
High
Database Description of chronic
medical conditions.
High
Database Family history Low
Medical records Current prescription
of medicines
High
Medical records Recent test results Medium
Medical records Automatically High
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updating the recent
diagnosis
Non-functional requirements:
Type Requirement Priority
Alerts Generating alerts
related to testing
results
Medium
Alerts End of recommended
diagnosis
Medium
Performance Real-time access to
medical records
High
Availability Accessibility to the
users and easy
transportation (Klein,
2017).
Medium
Security User-authorisation High
Security Admin passwords for
accessing critical
information
High
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3. Determine the systems requirements
The specific systems requirements related to EMR (Electronic Medical Records) are:
Design Requirements
Database: The system should use MySQL for accessing patients’ file for EMR
Operating System: The application should be compatible with Android, Windows and Mac
devices (Nguyen, et. al., 2014).
Performance requirements
Response Time: The application should display the results within five seconds after confirming
the inputs.
Capacity: EMR should be able to process the information received from 400 users
simultaneously.
Maintenance requirements
Back-up: EMR application should be able to back-up the data and should be compatible enough
for transferring the data to another location. The user should be able to transfer the data to a
cloud-based storage device.
Security:
User Rights: The primary users consist of physicians, nurse, or emergency technicians and the
application should be password protected.
Admin Rights: The authority for modifying the details lies with the user, however, the admin
should be able to provide assistance to the users only if requested (Nguyen, et. al., 2014).
Software Specific Requirements
Requirement 01: Adding new patient
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The physicians should be able to add new patients to the list.
Requirement 02: Authentication
The application should request for username and password when the physicians place a request
for obtaining medical records.
Requirement 03: Limited access to data
The EMR system should display the records of those patients only who are assigned to the
physicians. The records pertaining to patients of other physicians should not be displayed and
this can only be done after taking approval from the higher authorities.
Requirement 04: Identifying Patients
The EMR system should identify the patients based on the patient ID generated by the staff
during patient’s first visit to the hospital (Nguyen, et. al., 2014).
Requirement 05: Modifying patient details
The application should be flexible so that the latest medical condition can be updated.
Requirement 06: Date and time of modification
The application should display the details of modification such as date, time, and type of data
modified.
Requirement 07: Continuous usage
The application should not have any glitch and the user should be able to operate this without
any interruptions.
Requirement 08: Data Encryption
The application should encrypt the data stored by using AES encryption algorithms while
transferring the data to another location (Nguyen, et. al., 2014).
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4. Software and vendor selection
The use of technology transforms the ways in which the businesses are conducted since it
enhances the productivity of the staff. Hence, it is necessary for Healthscope Limited for utilising
the latest technology in order to enhance the quality of the services provided to the patients. By
analysing the software requirements of the organisation, the software developed by GE
Healthcare known as Centricity EMR Solution can be used for checking the medical records
online. It is a comprehensive solution for the issues faced by the physicians for checking the
medical records and providing appropriate treatment quickly. The data can be viewed in real-
time and can be accessed at any location which improves the quality of the services.
The benefits of using Centricity can be evaluated as:
 The application can be customised depending on the type of usage and hence, it provides
flexibility to the users (Kvedar, et. al., 2014).
 The application enhances collaboration because it enables to share data with existing
clinical system and the physicians will be able to access the information at any location.
 This is the latest application which has been developed for improving the patient care
services and this has been designed for catering to the needs of the changing trends
related to the use of technology.
 The patient history and summary can be easily accessed resulting in ascertaining the
results and modifying the existing diagnosis.
 It enhances the accuracy of maintaining the medical records since only a minimum
amount of human effort is required for recording and updating the information.
 The application saves the time for both patients and the physicians since there is no need
to search for the hard copies. This reduces the time taken for analysing the reports and
suggesting the appropriate diagnosis (Kvedar, et. al., 2014).
Additionally, this application is already being used by many firms and using the application will
enhance the competitiveness of the firm. The current usage of the application has been illustrated
below:
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Figure 2: Electronic Medical Records
Source: (Software Advice, 2018)
Vendor Selection
The application can be directly purchased from GE Healthcare as they have their operations
across Australia and the order can also be placed online. This is one of the advantages since
genuine products can be purchased and all the features available with the product can be utilised
to the maximum extent. Also, GE is a reputed brand and the products offered by GE are highly
valued because of the level of quality maintained by the firm. Hence, it is advisable to procure
Centricity EMR system from GE Healthcare directly instead of procuring it through a third-party
vendor.
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