Indiana Heart Hospital Case - Information Systems

A Digital Hospital Increases Performance and Saves Lives

1. Why is IHH considered to be a digital enterprise?

In what concerns business and economics, an enterprise is known to be any business, company or economic organization responsible for production, distribution or any other function. A digital enterprise adds to this definition the use of technology as a competitive advantage in a company’s internal and external operations. A digital enterprise company usually relies on information technology (IT) to manage customers, increase productivity and improve efficiency. After the introduction of internet the term was sometimes used to refer to businesses that incorporated digital technology, such as the purchase of goods from online sites. As more business processes, products and business models are transformed by digital information, the term will continue to evolve.

Indiana Heart Hospital is undoubtedly a digital enterprise, as its strategy is fundamentally based on the increase of productivity and efficiency through the use of a well-developed information technology system. In fact, this hospital may be taking the lead to the evolving concept of digital enterprise, as it took the use of IT in hospitals to another level.

Considering the health care industry and Indiana Heart Hospital, IT systems went from a simple database and research tools, which were mainly used for administrative and technical purposes, to a very important tool for doctors and nurses’ daily activities, as we can see from the use of sensors for automatic vital sign monitoring or automatic medicines ordering.

We can say that IHH uses enterprise information systems as their IT system allows workers to access and analyze real-time information and transaction processes across the entire organization. As an example we have that all doctors have pocket-size wireless tablet devices for data access, entry, and communication such that they can send orders to the pharmacy or to testing...