DEVELOPMENT OF A STRATEGIC HOSPITAL INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Abstract

Wide spread use of information system in the delivery of managed healthcare and challenges of identifying and disseminating relevant healthcare information, complex and diverse data and knowledge forms and tasks coupled with the prevalence of legacy systems require automated approaches for effective and efficient utilization of massive amount of data to support in strategic planning and decision-making and assist the strategic management mechanisms. Despite the fact that data mining is progressively used in information systems as a technology to support analytical decision making, it is however still barely used in hospital information system to support analytical decision-making process. Hence, this paper presents the development of a web-based Strategic Hospital Information Management System (SHIMS) based on data mining technology. The designed web-based SHIMS was developed using Hypertext Protocol (PHP) as the programming language, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 as the database server and Apache as web server, and implemented using three-tier architecture. The developed SHIMS offered capabilities to increase the productivity of medical personnel, analyze care outcomes, lower healthcare costs, improve healthcare quality by using fast and better clinical decision making and generally assist the strategic management mechanisms.