Introduction: 

Information System (IS) is recolonizing the industry, and Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is offering its services in the healthcare industry.  EMR is providing its assistance in the maintaining the health record of the patients while offering assistance to the doctors and other health service providers (Khan, Abbas & Halder, 2014). The deemed report provides an insight of cloud based EMR service with a network diagram for the same along with its pros and cons. The elements, technologies and the resources required in the implementation process has also been discussed. Finally, the report has been concluded by offering the risk management strategy for the considered service.

Required elements and technologies: 

Implementing a new technology offers multiple requirements that need to be fulfilled before the implementation. The case is same with cloud based EMR, and hence, the considered section defines the required elements and technologies for the implementation.

Technology:

The technological demand for the implementation of the considered system is limited to a client-server system. However, client server system consists of a vast number of hardware equipment along with different software (Bajwa, Singh & De, 2017). To earn a broader view of the needs the system can be classified as client and server.

Client:  Client refers to the computing system equipped by the user to make specific requests to the server for the specific information. The computing system can be a workstation, mobile devices, tablet PC or laptop.

Server: It contains applications and database for accessing on request from the client to share, process and store information. In the deemed case the cloud based server with the centralized database is proposed because of its efficiency and mobility.

Elements:

Apart from the technological needs, other factors need to be considered before implementing the system in the organization. One of the most critical elements is appropriate leadership under which the implementation process can achieve the deemed goal. Proper planning and resource management are critical factors to the achieving the goal.  Selecting the right vendor for the purchase and implementation of the EMR. Suitable time frame and expectation analysis. Organizing the clinical contents that will be expected from the EMR.

Resources required: 

Organizational resources play the most significant role in the implementation or success of a new project or system. Hence, it is advisable to analyses and plans the resources before introducing any new project or system. The deemed section analyses over the resources that are required for the implementation of the EMR.

Stakeholders: Stakeholders are potentially the most important resource of an organization. In the deemed situation the doctors, nurses, accountants and other employees are the ones who will contribute to the system after its implementation (Boonstra, Versluis & Vos, 2014). The patients also need to approve of storing their health record to a cloud based EMR. Hence, the stakeholder’s approval for the system is mandatory for the same.

Capital: To install the system the hospital will need money and other modes of capital. The deemed organization will have to buy the technologies and the security measures to keep the system protected (Millards, Bru & Merger, 2012). They will also have to employee the skill to maintain the functionality of the deemed system.

Inventory: Inventory of the organization consists of all the assets, product and services of an organization. The system should be devised based on the size of the inventory, and it will also offer the systems required for the implementation process (Anoshiravani et al., 2012).

Information: The organization was using EMR earlier, and hence they must have some data stored in it. Those data could be of assistance for the implementation purpose. It will simplify the research that needs to be done before the implementation of new system.

Software Diagram: 

Figure1: Network Diagram of EMR

(Source: Created by Author)

Justification of the Diagram:

The designed model is a 3 layered model consisting of access, distributed and core layers. The access layers will enable connection of enterprise with the server and the end-users. The distribution layer serves the purpose of smart operations layer where filtering, routing and QoS policies are managed. The speed of the network will be managed by the core layer.

Applications and services that will run on the considered software:

The deemed system will monitor all the clinical applications and services they have been listed as follows:

Report Sharing: The deemed system will deliver opportunity for timely and appropriate communication of information to relevant stakeholders. It will reduce the manual sharing of the reports which were time-consuming and took a lot of effort (Krush et al. 2014).

Diagnosis Applications: The tools and processes used for diagnosis purpose or biological sample evaluation will also be operated in an automated manner by the deemed system (Jung et al., 2014).

Billing System: Accounting and billing processes are essential for any organization, and hence it is important to keep a clean and organized record for the same. The considered system offers its services in maintaining the same.

Periodic Checkups: The doctors are burdened with the responsibility to visit their patients periodically to keep track of the latter’s progress and condition t (Krush et al. 2014). However, the deemed system lightens the burden by notifying the former of whom to visit and when.

Monitoring the patients: As suggested in the previous point the deemed system notifies the doctors of which patient to visit. To achieve the targeted objective, the system monitors the patients upon specific parameters like vaccination and other physical reading such as blood pressure, temperature and others (Jung et al., 2014).

Benefits and threats: 

The deemed system offers ample of benefits to the organization, however, if not maintained appropriately can offer specific threats. This section offers a brief overview of the advantages offered by the system and highlights the potential threats offered by same.

Benefits: 

The benefits of the cloud-based EMR has been discussed in the following paragraph.

The deemed system provides the hospital with accurate and complete information of the patients along with their progress (Tierney et al., 2013). The above mentioned process helps the hospital in improved decision making. It also enables sharing of the information electronically with other hospitals and healthcare units which helps save the patient and the organization lot of time and hassle. EMR system simplifies the organizational operations and hence offering improved productivity for the organization (King et al., 2014). Equipping cloud-based ERP will also help the organization save money of the hardware that needs to be established for the operational purposes of the deemed system.

Threats: 

Along with benefits Cloud based EMR also introduces some potential threats to the organization and they have been discussed as follows:

  EMR errors: Generally, the physicians update the data of the patients on the EMR without updating the progress report. It can lead to repeating of the data that may lead to error in the patients’ health record (Shini, Thomas & Chitharanjan, 2012).

Internet Failure: The cloud-based EMR is a web-based process, and hence in case of internet failure the operation of the EMR may be halted.

Data Security: Cloud-based EMR offers data breach threats. Cyber-attacks may put the privacy, confidentiality, and security of the patient and the organization’s data at risk (Bowman, 2013).

Approval and risk management: 

The benefits and comfort offered by the system have been described above. However, the benefit of the system is not limited to those only. The patients and their associates suffer from regular visits to the healthcare units. Hence if an automated system is offered to them to reduce those labors, the resultant will be in favor of the organization. In other words, the system will offer competitive advantage in the market to the organization (Bonney, 2013). Risk concerns have been assessed in the following section.

Risk Management: 

To manage the risk associated with the system, the following measures will be equipped to prevent any catastrophic event from happening:

It starts with Implementation: The policies and the procedures of the organization need to be considered before implementation of the system. They also need to be upgraded with the former accordingly while retaining the older ones (Li et al., 2012). The deemed step will create the system almost error free.

Training and educating workforce: To omit the chances of developing any loophole in the security of the system, the hospital needs to educate their workforce about the system (Lei et al., 2014).

Communication with the Customers: Cloud based tools are often considered to be vulnerable to security and privacy attacks which may be concerning matter for the patients and their families (Li et al., 2012). Hence, a program should be developed to educate the patients about the benefits of the system.

Equipping security measure: The market is offering security measures for the cloud based EMRs. The hospital can equip them to omit chances of cyber attacks.

Local Backup: The organization can tackle the situation of internet failure by creating a local backup of the information as a contingency plan.

Conclusion:

The deemed report can be emphasized to conclude that EMR does offer assistance to the healthcare units and develops an additional level of comfort for the patients as well. The report also offers an insight into the requirements for the successful implementation of the cloud-based EMR in the deemed organization along with the requested network diagram. To omit the development of an ethical issue, the report has also offered limitations and the risk that is associated with the system along with the advantage that it can offer to the organization. However, taking appropriate measures can reduce those threats to a minimal impact level, and those measures have also been discussed in the same. The competitive advantage offered by the system is also part of the discussion in the report. Hence, in conclusion, it can be stated that the organization should equip the cloud based EMR in their workplace.

References:

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Bowman, S. (2013). Impact of electronic health record systems on information integrity: quality and safety implications. Perspectives in Health Information Management, 10(Fall).

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