what-when-how
In Depth Tutorials and Information
being used by medical facilities. It must also be flexible enough to adapt to differ-
ent work areas with different criteria. Finally, the system must be able to encompass
sociotechnical aspects.
In order to obtain the necessary information, the University Medical Center
(at Philipps University, Marburg, Germany) doctors were interviewed and data
were collected from the center's own files. It was found that patients who were
supplied with discharge summaries were less likely to be readmitted to the medical
center. It was also found that discharge summaries for patients were often incom-
plete or missing completely. his not only caused increased readmittance but also
led to missed follow-up tests and discontinuity in prescription information.
he root of these issues comes from both sides of the aisle. he practitioners
blame the hospitals for not providing sufficient paperwork, including discharge
summaries, and hospitals blame the physicians for not properly completing “pre-
paratory” paperwork before a patient is discharged. he lack of an IT system only
compounds the issue. Physicians also complain about the difficulty in scheduling
hospital appointments for their patients because of the long wait time.
hrough interviews with the medical center doctors and practitioners, it was
determined that IT support was necessary in certain areas. hose areas are shown
in the following chart (Table 14.3).
hough these issues are of immediate concern, they are not the only issues that
a new IT system would alleviate. here are three main concepts that IT should
Table 14.3
Necessary
ITSupport
Scheduling
IT support for scheduling is necessary for medical
center physicians and practitioners. It would also be
helpful for patients to have access.
Generation and
communication of
discharge letters
IT support is necessary to create discharge letters and
other reports. Access to reusable data is also
necessary.
Order entry
IT support for supply ordering would be helpful to all
physicians. Prep paperwork would also be important.
Access to knowledge
bases
Knowledge bases are already available for medical
center personnel, but IT support would make it
available to practitioners and patients.
Access to databases
for physicians and
patients
Databases are necessary for medical personnel, and
limited access would be granted to patients. Privacy
could be a concern.
Source:
Mario Beyer, Klaus A. Kuhn, Christian Meiler, Stefan Jablonski, Richard
Lenz. Towards a flexible, process-oriented IT architecture for an integrated
healthcare network,
Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Symposium on Applied
Computing
. Nicosia, Cyprus, March 14-17, 2004.
