Introduction
The discussion with a physician in the State hospital waiting room revealed the challenge facing the hospital that had an undeserved health record system. This was more profound in the department at the Critical care Unit of the hospital. “Sometimes we have been forced to reschedule our programs due to the last minute realization that other patients have been waiting for follow up activities more than two days” said the doctor.
This has been due to an insufficient health record system that is suppressed by the increased number of patients who visit the facility each day. The recent evolution of electronic health record system software is a perfect solution for this problem at the State Hospital (Catherine, 2005). Many lives have been lost due to delay for treatments while other patients have resorted to search for other services elsewhere due to this problem.
As a strategy to improve the quality of its services, the hospital has decided to introduce a new electronic health record system (FreeMed) to digitize the record system. However, this system faces a challenge of whether this method would be effective in case of power outage or failure of a mobile device. This paper presents a response to this question and gives how the facility can deal with this situation.
The FreeMed software
This is a computer based electronic medical record system that stores a patient’s information from admission to discharge. It can be used with any web browser in the best desired language by the user (Nyheim & Connolly, 2004). Its main features are importing and exporting patient information, reporting and can be used as a reminder for medical operations.
The data is represent in terms of modules based on the category of information to be exported or imported. Each department within the hospital can be assigned a module, which is interconnected throughout the departments. As such, information can be retrieved by anybody within the institution because it is web based software. The only caution will be to introduce a password system to ensure that the privacy of client’s information is maintained. This makes the record system easier to operate.
The challenge of the plan
This digital system requires a computer to be operational because the software will be installed in each computer then linked by a local network connection. The major problem is power outage and failure of a mobile device because this will make the system functionless. Every strategy should be designed to ensure that there is no any instance of power breakups.
Precaution taken by other firms using the system
Health institutions that have digitized their record systems have introduced a power back-up system incase of a failure (Timothy, 2010). This is simply through installing standby generators which will automatically start in case of a power outage. In case of a mobile device failure, each data base will be served with an external memory device to store all information. Workers have been instructed to always export data after use.
The proposed plan
The first step for the plan is to design a central database unit in the hospital. This will be followed by acquiring the computers with the software supplied by an IT company. The third step is design a power supply system for both electricity and generator systems. The design should be automatic to ensure the generator is switched on automatically when there is no power. The last stage is to install the system and train the workers.
References
Catherine, P. (2005). Security Financials: The Core Element of Security Business Proposals. New York: Pearson Publishing.
Nyheim, P & Connolly, J. (2004). Technology strategies for the hospitality industry. New York: Prentice Hall.
Timothy, L. (2010). Project Management for IT Pros: An Interview with Rita Mulcahy. London: Cisco Press.