Software Implementation for Hospital Management Information System

1.0 Introduction

Integration of documentation and knowledge based computerized services in Hospital Management Information System is a tremendous means of helping health professionals in their daily practices and to improve the quality of service delivery.

The system will store patient’s records, drug inventory and dispensation as well as other relevant clinical information within the Hospital. The system will be used by the staff (Doctor Nurse, Clerks, Consultants and other relevant authorities as the demand may be) within the Hospital. It will process data speedily and accurately provide information when and where required.

The Hospital Management Information system will be used to store data, produce reports and handle management inquiries. In Hospitals that are made up of Doctors, Nurse, Patients and other personnel staff, an information system is required to keep track of the day-to-day transaction of the clinic and to improve the communication skills. Also this system will help, in highlighting risk/complex patients for consultant input alert of DNA; easily identify all patients taking certain medications, monitor frequency of major complication e.g. peptic ulcer, check for known drug interaction, and improve evidence based practice, record questions.

Therefore, it is hoped that the Hospital Management Information system would provide a flexible and reliable management for the Federal Medical Center Hospital. This program is carefully designed to work in a standalone system or in a multi user environment.

1.1 Background Of Study

Technical innovations have proved its importance in developing the convenience we know and have profound effect upon many areas of human life.

The ability to handle and manipulate vast amount of data quickly, efficiently, reliable information, store querying and retrieval, prompt information access for research and library information had made computer very useful in varied applications. Cleary, its values are seen and applied in all fields of human endeavours. It is used in financial institutions, force and even hospitals. Hospitals are key institutions in providing relief against sickness and diseases and they require information to support medical quality assurance, cost containment, productivity improvement, and program planning and evaluation research in education.

Information system of a hospital organization is efficient if the information needed by the hospital organization is collected, processed and transfer within the hospital organization in the shortest possible time. The rate in terms of time for information needed by an institution to be collected, process and disseminated within the institution is proportional to efficiency and effectiveness of the institution or its information system (Badly R. 1997).

In Federal Medical Hospital Makurdi, the manual system for information collection, processing and dissemination within the Hospital has led to a low efficiency and effectiveness of the Hospital information system due to the fact that a lot of time is taken to collect, process and disseminate information within the Hospital. It is therefore, necessary to develop a computerized system for Myom Hospital which will collect, process and disseminate information within the Hospital in a fast, efficient and effective hospital information system.

1.2 Statement Of Problems:

The problems facing Federal Medical Center Hospital are:

1. There is no proper past patient record keeping which lead to time delay and difficulty in tracing patient’s records.
2. There are no proper financial records and bills which lead to backlog of bills and as such revenue loss.
3. There is no automatic pay roll system. It is clearly that the manual system is too monotonous and prone to errors. It is also a tedious task trying to access store and retrieve information from the manual system.
4. There are no proper medical store inventories taking because it is done manually so it’s prone to errors.

1.3 Objectives Of The Study

The main purpose and objectives of this study is to:

1. Build and maintain patents database for analysis of data to facilitate decision making.
2. To update the existing procedures regarding standards for programming, operations, system and data entry; thereby ensuring that each section conform to the newer methodology available.
3. Improve on the accuracy of accounting and administration of hospital.
4. Reduce cost in running office administration.

1.4 Scope Of Study

The study will be limited to the Hospital Information System function and the activities of Federal Medical Center Hospital.

1.5 Limitation Of The Study

Some draw backs experienced during this research work were in the following areas:

1. The proposed system was not designed not to check-make staff of the Hospital to laxity of work.
2. The proposed system will only process information if relevant data are keyed in as input.
3. Authentication into proposed system is with the use of password and user’s name.

The proposed system Graphical User Interface (GUI) was written only in English language.