HICT Projects

When do IT guys get involved in a design and build hospital project. The answer is obvious : On day one.

It is very typical that IT input is delayed until the very last minute. The construction company always see that IT means pulling cables and installing computers.

If the client has no experience building or worst, running a hospital, their focus will be more into hospital spaces and medical equipment. Clinicians usually worried about what do they get in their consultation rooms, OTs and procedure rooms in terms of medical equipment.

A couple of years ago, I was visiting my client in China, Fuzhou General Hospital (www.fzzyy.com). During the visit, I was invited by the hospital director to attend a presentation by a team of overseas consultants (Australia and Hong Kong) designing their new outpatient clinic block. I was the only outsider sitting with the client.

According to reliable source, the Ministry of Health has rejected a proposal to implement Cerner HIS in four hospitals. The contractor who received a letter of intent to computerize four hospitals (Penang, Ipoh, Klang and Kluang) submitted a technical proposal to the Ministry of Health earlier. For some reasons, Cerner's proposal is rejected on technical ground.

I am always of the opinion that the effectiveness of a data
warehouse solution is as good as the quality of data you have and how
are they structured. In a recently completed hospital data warehouse
project, I was trying to analyze the percentage of outpatients in the
past eight years required an x-ray and ultrasound. Simple, isn't it?
Not quite.

A friend came over on Sunday evening and we were having a discussion on high availability (HA). He was saying for enterprise level kind of application, HA is the key consideration for choosing the right system.

It is always a challenge in Malaysia to get Medical Equipment planner to understand IT. In a few HICT projects, we always have problem with the imaging equipment interface. Yes, the equipment provided under recommendation of the medical planner are all Dicom 3 compliance.

In a typical HIS evaluation, we usually come up with a list of functionalities and the vendor are required to indicate whether their software comply or not.

So far, non require the vendor to indicate how many clicks are required to execute a certain functions. For example, how many clicks you need to make to register a patient? With the introduction of web based solution, we are actually make more clicks as compare to client server based solution.

Recently, I need to submit a generic Laboratory Information System (LIS) specifications for a HICT project in Malaysia. Having working experience with Cerner, Medicom and seen couple of other demo, I have decided to propose LabTrak and thus using its functionalities as the baseline.

The main reason for choosing LabTrak is because it doesn't require big servers (compare to Cerner on HP Alpha and Medicom on Sun) and Oracle database. Keeping cost low to make sure the project can move on and sustainable are the key design criteria.

This is the standard presentation slides for Selayang Hospital. It was last presented to 20 visitors, majority hospital directors from China.

The presentation represents the ideal architecture of Total Hospital Information System when it was first conceived.

As per request from China Hospital Information Management Association, I helped to organize a visit to Selayang Hospital. Thanks to the management of Selayang Hospital, the 20 visitors were given a very warm welcome and the entire visit was very smooth. Our guests were really impressed with the reception and happy with what they learned from the hospital's briefing.