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Hospitals today have evolved to be a multi-disciplinary, complex and interdependent industry that is built around highly capital intensive resources. In order to serve patients in an efficient way and to enhance revenue, hospitals are recognizing IT as a supportive arm to control cost and to improve operational efficiency.

Computers were introduced in the hospitals to in order to:

• increase organizational efficiency through reduction in the overall costs of delivering health care services;
• store, retrieve and exchange useful, accurate, complete and timely information to meet the requirements of the various departments requiring data;
• utilize the available resources effectively and optimally;
• improve medical care in order to provide high quality medical care at reasonable cost;
• have an improved Management Information System; and
• reduce clerical and administrative workload by automating processes and reducing paper work requirement

A need was also realized to create a health information system specifically for hospitals called the Hospital Information System or HIS which would automate and streamline some of the essential functions of the administrative and clinical departments in a hospital by computerizing the process of collecting, collating and retrieving patient information.

The words ‘data’ and ‘information’ are important for the understanding of an HIS system. ‘Data’ is a series of observations, measurements, or facts. It is a collection of facts from which conclusions may be drawn. Data which is meaningful to the end user is Information. Data in itself is Raw in nature. Information is crucial at all management levels from periphery to center for policy makers and care providers. Information system is a set of elements working interactively to gather and process input data and to disseminate output information.

Hospital Information System (HIS) is a comprehensive, integrated information system designed to manage the administrative, financial and clinical aspects of a hospital. This encompasses paper-based information processing as well as data processing machines.

Hospital Information System (HIS) is also said to be a set of components and procedures organized with the objective of generating information which will improve health care management decisions at all levels of health systems.

Collen in his book ‘Hospital Computer Systems’  writes that ” the goal of a HIS is to use computers and communication equipment to collect, store, process , retrieve and communicate patient care and administrative information for all hospital affiliated activities to satisfy the functional requirements of all authorized users and to provide decision support to the government and the politicians”.

‘Health Management Information System’ (HMIS) is defined as a set of interrelated components working together to gather, retrieve, process, store and disseminate information to support the activities of health system planning, control, coordination and decision- making both in management and services delivery. These terms HIS and HMIS are used interchangeably in the industry.

HIS primarily uses a network of computers to gather, process, and retrieve patient care and administrative information for all hospital activities. It has been developed with the objective of streamlining treatment flow of a patient in the hospital while allowing doctors and other staff to perform to their peak ability in an optimized and efficient manner. It also helps as a decision support system for the hospital administration in the form of automated reports from different departments and also MIS (Management Information System) and other statistical and administrative reports and data. HIS also provides an accurate electronically stored medical record of the patient. A database of such records can be utilized for statistical requirements and for research.  

By using HIS, one can utilizes the power of computers in Medicare such that a network of integrated computers maintain an integrated record of all services provided to a patient in the hospital from departments such as laboratory, radiology, blood bank, nursing, clinical, emergency, in-patient ward, outpatient department, registration and billing, medical stores and pharmacy, finance and so on.

The software created for each department or process is called a module. A module is a software component with specialty-specific extensions as well as of a large variety of sub-systems in medical specialties like orthopedic, cardiology etc. A module is used to automate individual departments like laboratory, radiology, pharmacy, nursing, clinical and so on. All these modules when put together form the HIS. CIS (Clinical Information System) is sometimes separated from HIS. This distinction is based on the software vendor’s product packaging. Some sell an integrated HIS with the capability to automate most functions in a hospital, while others may sell individual department modules and their select processes like the Doctor Appointment Scheduling system as separate products which have the capability to integrate with other modules to provide an enterprise HIS. A CIS primarily automates clinical functions of a doctor and may have the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) also as its part.

The implementation of the above modules in an integrated fashion equips the medics, paramedics and other members of the health care delivery system of the hospital with a computerized environment for better patient care.

Authored by - Ranjeeta Basra K., Asst. Professor- International Institute of Health Management Research, New Delhi, India

Tags: HIS, HMIS