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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1.1 Background

Information systems is collection of hardware, software, data, people and

procedures that are designed to provide the right information the user needs to do their

task more effectively, to the right person and at the right time (Davis and Yen, 1998).

Information system is important for any business because the business needs to

have accurate information and need to have the technology as a tool for solving

problems and at the same time increasing the productivity and the quality of doing

business. Businesses today use information system and use the available technologies

because they understand the importance of maintaining and updating data electronically

(Davis and Yen, 1998).

Using information system for managing information in the health care such as

patient record, patient appointment system, patients scheduling appointment, doctor

schedule and medicine prescription is not only to save time or reduce cost, but also a

way to support and improve the health care information to be more accessible and

flexible (modifying, saving, deleting, updating etc) for system users and storing data

efficiently. In addition, it improves the quality of data control (Liu and Zhu, 2007).

On the other hand, information system works to interact with the system

databases, financial module, scheduling module and the entire system modules.

Therefore, to get the best implementation, the health care system should be able to

interact with several medical health care staff (physicians, nurses, medical device users,

financial and the administrators),

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which is the conducted way to get a good insight how health care system working and

will be more effectively and efficiently for managing the information (Song et al.,

2007).

Health care information system is looking at patients, in order to represent their

health information history and provide the flexibility and accessibility for patient

information to be more reachable by the authorized person (Rogers et al., 2006).

On the other hand, health care information system have user interface, that

provides to the system user the ability to interact with the patient; Once the patient

arrive at the medical center they must register their information and health history in the

health care center system. The system automatically will update the patient information;

then the patient will be under queue to have an appointment for medical check up by the

physician. The physician will specify whether the patient case is an emergency case or

not. If the case is an emergency, the physician will retrieve the relevant patient

information from the system database. Nevertheless, in the general case, the system will

request the examination queue for the patient. Finally, after the patient complete the

medical check the system will place the prescription order to the pharmacy unit and

update the information to the patient record (Tang et al., 2001).

The challenge here is how the information system can represent and manage the

entire information in the health care such as patient information, patient consultation

history, patient appointment, doctor's schedule, payment, products and medicines, and

document. In addition, how an integrated system can provide the accessibility to the

right and accurate information for any patient in the health care center. Moreover, how

the system can provide the accessibility for patients to allow them confirm their own

appointment by themselves.

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1.2 Research Focus

The focus of this research is to study the following areas towards the

development of an integrated health care management system:

a. Patient information history, which include all the patient information such as

consultation history, medication history, treatments history, appointments.

b. Doctors schedule information, which include the doctor schedule status such

as (available, on leave, oversea, operation day etc)

c. Products, such as medicine information, which contains the products prices

and the supplier for the product.

d. Third party interest such as insurance companies and companies' information.

A patient can be a business client of an insurance company.

e. Managing the patient appointment and giving the opportunity to the patient to

confirm their own appointment by themselves online.

The expected outcomes for focusing on those points in this research are:

a. Providing an integrated health care system to the health care.

b. Improving the quality of health care services.

c. Keep tracking for all the patient information and patient consultation history.

d. Managing the doctor schedule.

e. Managing the patient appointment.

f. Giving the patient the opportunity to confirm their appointment by

themselves online, which help to:

 Reduce the working load of nurse.

 Reduce unnecessary waiting time for patients and staffs.

 Encouraging continuity of medical care.

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1.3 Problem Statement

The current health care providers are using different ways and systems for

managing information. Some health care providers are using only one system for

managing the health information but it is not comprehensive for managing all the

information, for instance the system can support only the patient information but cannot

support the patient appointment or cannot support the doctor schedule.

Therefore Mazzi et al. (2006) reported results of study about current system use

in the health care, which proved that there is a lack of software that fulfils the patient’s

need for medical information and the doctor’s need to monitor patients.

Conversely, there are a health cares are using more than one health management

system such as (patient information, doctor schedule, products and medicine suppliers,

financial etc.) for managing the health information. Those system are dedicated to only

one activity of the healthcare and this functionality is not integrated with other systems

(Mazzi et al., 2006).

Furthermore, about the patient appointment, the patient can book an appointment

through a different way such as (telephone, email, website etc); otherwise the patient

needs to go to the health center personally to make an appointment.

Traditionally, the doctors’ time is more important than patient time. So an

appointment system designed to minimize the doctor idle time only and considered that

the patient can wait for more than one hour to be attended by a physician in a health

care center, which make patients feel they are being disregarded and treated unfairly

(Dexter, 1999).

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On the other hand, the old appointment system designed to minimize the doctor

idle time but current designing of an appointment system is based on decisive factors

with respect to both the patient and doctor (Wijewickrama and Takakuwa, 2005).

Therefore, here is the necessity of developing an integrated health care system

that can manage the entire health care information and provide a very sturdy interacting

communication between the system component and system users.

1.4 Research Objectives

The objective of this research is to:

a) Identify and analyze the current system used for managing patient

information and health care information.

b) Design and Develop an integrated system for managing the patient

information and the health care information.

c) Develop the confirmation appointment system to allow patient to confirm

their appointment by themselves online.

d) To enhance the protection of patient health information history and provides

the flexibility and accessibility of the information to be more reachable by

authorized personnel.

e) Observe and control the huge information of health care (diseases, finance,

medication, treatment, out patients etc) to enhance the ability of evaluating

the work in the health care, which provides the necessary information for

future planning.

f) Provide very secure communication between patients and physicians. In

addition, incorporates services such as prescription renewal and

appointment.

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1.5 Research Significance

An integrated health care management system provides an electronic document

instead of using the traditional method (paper document), which is not easy to retrieve

patient information and can not accesses remotely.

Therefore, Zeng and Cimino, (2000) mentioned that because of the huge of

patients information in the health care, it is not practical to keep going using the paper

documents for tracking and managing the patient information , but information system

in health care, systematically supports extensive manage for the of patients information

in the health care and keep tracking for all medication details

Moreover, Wilcox et al., (2005) refer that the traditional method (paper

documentation) it is limited aptitude for saving patient information, retrieving patient

information etc and cannot access it remotely. From this issue, the importance of health

care information system that can provide the flexibility and supports remote access to

patient health information.

On the other hand, regarding to Brown et al. (2008) a health care management

system provides an extensive patient record, which helps to make proper diagnoses and

prescribe proper treatments and provides track crucial medical information, insurance

data, consultation history, medications and special conditions, which means improve the

quality of health care and enhance the health care performance by allowing the

physician to diagnose diseases faster and more safely since historical information will

be collected from numerous sources to present an obvious picture of a patient’s health at

the point of care. Furthermore it provides consolidated reports for all patient records,

and historical data.

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1.6 Research Scope

i. This research is for analyzing and developing a web based integrated system to

manage the entire information in the health care such as:-

- Patient information: personal patient information, patient consultations

history, patient treatments and diagnosis, patient medications history,

patient appointments, confirming the appointment online, patient

documents, and patient payments.

- Doctors’ schedule information.

- Products and medicine information.

- Health care client information such as insurance companies.

ii. This system can be used online through World Wide Web by the users,

however the security need to be focused.

iii. The doctor and the nurse can observe the patient health based on the

consultation history for each appointment.

iv. This system manages the patient appointment and allows the patient to use

the system online and confirm their own appointment by themselves.

However, the patient cannot change the appointment time or date, they have

to see the nurse to do that and the patients are not allowed to booking the

appointment by themselves.

v. Before the patient can use the system, the patient must register through the

nurse to create the user account.

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1.7 Organization of Thesis

This research contains seven chapters to cover the entire academic research

requirement. Chapter one covers introduction and background about information system

and how the Information system supports health care and highlights the system

limitation and system significant, in addition to research objective and problem

statement.

Chapter two highlights the literature review which is related to what the earlier

researches have done in the aspects of health care information system. Chapter three

highlights the research methodology. This chapter covers the research methods that the

researcher uses to collect data to determine the user requirements needed to develop the

system. Chapter four highlights the case study and data collection. Chapter five covers

the data analysis, finding, developing, implementation and testing. Chapter six covers

all the concepts about the system designing and finally chapter seven highlights the

research results and conclusion.

1.8 Conclusion

This chapter has introduced that the information system use in the health care to

manage the health care information such as patient information, medical information,

appointments etc. and presents the research focus, which is studying many areas (patient

information history, medication history, doctors schedule information, products,

insurance companies, managing patient appointment) toward developing an integrated

health care management system, because the current health cares are using non

integrated system for managing their information. So, this research aims to develop an

integrated health care management system.

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1.9 Summary

Introduction chapter is the initial chapter that represents the research headline

and research objectives. This chapter starts by presenting health care information system

backgrounds, definitions and importance of information system in the health care. Next

the research focuses on the research area study and the expected outcomes from this

research. Moreover, the scope of this research is about managing the patient information

in the health care center.

On the other hand, the problem statement of this research is to analyze how the

current health care centers use the information system for managing patient information

and patient appointments. The objective is to develop an integrated health care

management system. Hence, the significance of this research comes from the

importance of using health care electronic record to provide a complete patient health

records to make proper diagnoses, prescription, and treatments. It is also to track down

all patient information. The next chapter is the literature review of previous studies.

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