Information System Briefing Paper Hcs/483

Information System Briefing Paper

HCS/483

16 April 2012

Information System Briefing Paper

Health care professionals’ need access to reliable, complete, and accurate information in order to provide effective and efficient health care services and to achieve the strategic goals of the organization. Selecting the right application, one that meets the organization’s needs, is a critical step. There are a host of long-term costs associated with maintaining, supporting, and enhancing the system. Implementing a new information system in a health care organization requires a significant amount of planning and preparation.

Selecting and Acquiring an Information System

The development of an information system (IS) has always been a complex process necessitating the use of methodological approaches such as the systems development life cycle, which is a systematic process of creating a system. Numerous methods have been suggested in the past twenty years. There are so many methods which have created the challenge of how to go about choosing the appropriate information system development. A viable solution to this problem is to apply method engineering to customize an appropriate IS development method based on (Wee-Kek, Chuan-Hoo, 2010).

The health care organization should begin by appointing an implementation team comprising experienced individuals, including representatives from key areas in the organization, particularly areas that will be affected by or responsible for using the new system. Key users should be involved in analyzing existing processes and procedures and making recommendations for changes. A system champion should be part of the implementation team and serve as an advocate in soliciting input, representing user views, and spearheading the project. When implementing a clinical application, it is important that the system champion be a physician or clinician, someone who is able to represent the views of the care providers.

Organization’s...