Digitization has brought a huge transformation in the health care industry across the globe. Hospital Information System (HIS) is one such technology that has simplified all aspects of a hospital's administrative functioning. It has lead to hospitals working with greater efficiency, coordination, and improved care.

Worldwide, several healthcare facilities have strongly adopted this system over conventional manual procedures. It automatically generates and maintains Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and makes it available across the hospitals through cloud computing. This helps administrators to have easy access to patient's information such as the number of visits, medical conditions, treatment cycle, and lab work.

It allows health care professionals to make faster decisions and plays a key role in improving the quality of healthcare services. Technological advancements such as eHealth platforms and cloud computing are gaining momentums in the medical sector resulting in a strategic collaboration of IT companies and healthcare organizations. This will create high utility services and products leading to overall advancement in hospital administration.

Impact of Hospital Information System (HIS) on patient’s safety and confidentiality:

Implementation of hospital information systems can bring potential benefits as well as potential medical errors. Many of these errors are associated with the registration of national codes and clinical information codes or some other administrative processes. Therefore, to prevent these types of operator and organizational errors, Hospitals, and health systems, are implementing electronic health records (EHRs) with embedded clinical decision support (CDS) which generates case-specific advice to support providers in decision-making.

Likewise, several Patient engagement tools such as eHealth, ePrescribing solutions, and Computerised Provider Order Entry (CPOE) with a varying degree of Computerised Decision Support Systems (CDSS) have been developed to reduce the scope of mistakes.

Cybersecurity is becoming a major concern for the medical community with the increased adaptation of electronic health records. Since EHRs contain sensitive health information, it requires special layers of confidentiality, such as with mental health treatment. Any incidents of breaches in confidentiality can significantly damage the reputation of the healthcare providers. To avoid these consequences, hospitals are adopting different safeguard methods to protect the privacy, security, and integrity of recorded patient information.  It includes preventing unauthorized access, use of encrypted storage or devices, digital certificates, smart cards, and biometrics.

Conclusion:

Implementation of the hospital information system (HIS) in large health-care facilities can meet the administrative requisites and the strategic goal of improving overall patient-care quality.

Embedding Computerised Decision Support Systems (CDSS) in all patient engagement tools helps to overcome patient's safety concerns and improves the adherence to clinical care guidelines. Furthermore, Data breach can be prevented by training staff about security policies and Conducting audit trails of all system logs by user identification and activity.

-Tejaswini Hiremath
Research Analyst
Infoholic Research