The
History of the use of ICT in Healthcare
The use of ICT in healthcare has followed a predictable path
over the years, which parallels the development and introduction
of ICT into the marketplace generally. Although ICT solutions
of one form or another have been used in healthcare for decades,
the ICT available today is only just becoming sophisticated
enough to address three specific characteristics of clinical
service delivery that have made it difficult for ICT to directly
support care delivery processes in the past.
Care delivery processes
in multi-disciplinary teams are:
| 1. |
Complex
and multi faceted; |
| 2. |
Constantly
changing at a relatively rapid rate;
and |
| 3. |
Delivered
in an almost infinite number of locations. |
| |
|
Financial systems were
among the first type of information system
to be introduced into healthcare organisations.
They provided accounting and financial
administration functionality.
Business administration
systems that supported the non-clinical
departments and their business processes
followed.
Office automation application
then became common, providing basic office
administration functionality.
Patient administration
systems were then introduced, which
provide functionality that supports
patient services units such as the
admissions office and some of the administrative
processes in some clinical units.
The introduction of a
small number of additional functions
useful to clinicians, such as order entry
and results reporting, caused some health
software vendors to promote their patient
administration applications as Hospital
Information Systems. The key problems
clinicians have with this variety of
system are the limited range of functionality
offered creating a situation where parts
of processes, rather than whole processes,
are automated and the problem of accessibility.
Access to the application was not available
when and where the clinician provided
care.
At around the same time,
information systems that addressed administration
functions of individual clinical departments
or clinical units were introduced under
the term ‘Clinical Information
Systems’. The ‘Clinical’ label
implies clinical functionality. In many
cases, the functionality supports only
administrate processes in a clinical
unit or department rather than clinical
service delivery processes. Examples
of departmental systems include Pathology
Management Systems and Radiology Management
Systems. An example of clinical unit
systems is Theatre Management Systems,
which are largely complex scheduling
application and don’t support the
clinical processes in the operating room.
Very few, if any,
information systems, other that Emerging
Health Solutions, directly address
the support of clinical patient care
delivery processes across all clinical
units and types of episodes of care,
be they hospital or community based.
The absence of these systems
has created a situation where basic transactional
activity data about patient care is either
non existent or patchy at best. The paucity
of hard data has made it chronically
difficult to make quality tactical and
strategic decisions in the management
of healthcare services. The use of the
Emerging Health Solutions CIS by clinicians
creates a comprehensive record of transactional
patient care activity data that forms
the ideal basis for tactical decision
making and strategic management.
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