Integrated Hospital Information System

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the experience gained by developing a hospital information system software. Accurate, reliable and timely available information is vital in any industry. It allows people to make effective decisions as and when required. Healthcare is one of a significant industry as it directly interacts with human lives and, a hospital which is a key component of the healthcare sector requires to have such information when cooperating with patient care. A study was carried out to identify the issues faced in the daily routine of a Sri Lankan hospital and found out that most of the processes are carried manually. Especially patient medical records maintained in manual documents made it difficult to access and retrieve information swiftly. Further, there are few standalone software systems operate in some departments of the hospital but those systems do not share information with other departments and results in duplication of important information. Therefore, it was decided to develop an integrated hospital information system which intended to automate and streamline the patient care processes and distribute information among medical staff and patients. Waterfall, the most traditional software development method was used as the development methodology. The requirement of the system was fixed hence the waterfall method was more suited for the project. Laravel PHP web framework was used to build the system. Laravel is based on model-view-controller (MVC) architecture which helps in improving the performance, allows better documentation, and has multiple built-in functionalities. The web-based, user-friendly interface of the system made an easy to handle system for any user and enhanced the workload efficiency and improved the documentation and communication. The evaluation resulted in a favorable response from stakeholders but also suggested a few alterations to the system. Nevertheless, it is proved that the integrated hospital information system enhanced the productivity of a hospital in the most effective and efficient manner.