“e-ආරෝග්යා” - eHealth Solution for the ETU at the Colombo South Teaching Hospital
Group Members
1. Kapila Lanerolle
2. Chamendri Silva
3. Ureka Wijekoon
4. Gerad Niroshan
Supervised By:
Dr. Shahani Weerawarne
Dr. Mudith Karunathilaka
CONTENT
Project Idea in Brief
Introduction
Background and Motivation
Scope
Deliverable
Risks
references
PROJECT IDEA IN BRIEF
Idea of this project is to develop a software solution for the government hospitals in Sri Lanka which will facilitate to provide better health services to the people. Implementation will be based on existing open source components and in align with a comprehensive BPR (Business Process Re-engineering) done by an MBA student (medical doctor attached to the ETU.
Sri Lanka is one of the few countries that provide free health services to the citizens. Therefore majority of the hospitals in Sri Lanka are under the wing of the Sri Lankan government. All the hospitals maintain their own set of patient records. If all the patient details are stored in a place where all the hospitals can access without any delay, the Sri Lankan health sector can deliver a much more efficient service to the people.
With the available facilities in the IT industry it is possible to have some solutions which can answer this problem to a great extent. The proposed 'eHealth' system is a great idea in an ICT industry which provides real solution for the health care services.
This solution will be initially developed for the ETU at the Colombo South Teaching Hospital, which will be later extended to the other units of this hospital. Then this solution can be spreaded to the other hospitals in Sri Lanka like a "ripple effect" which will have a great impact on the public health services in Sri Lanka.
Most of the activities in Sri Lankan hospitals are still using the traditional manual methods based on paper work. These methods lead to decrease the efficiency in a hospital in a considerable manner. It also leads to wastage of resources that can be used for the benefit of the poor people. For example lots of medicines are thrown away from the Colombo South Teaching Hospital due to exceeding expire date. This happens because the hospital orders more than required medicine in order to prevent shortage. This can be easily prevented if an efficient system can be used to calculate the amount of medicine that should be ordered for a given period of time. Even patient registrations have to be done several times if he/she has been transferred to a different ward because they don't reuse previous records.
In developed countries a paperless hospital is a well accepted concept which incorporates new technologies aimed at improving efficient delivery of health care.
There have been researches done by various individuals both on heath sector and IT sector regarding this area as the first step towards the concept of paperless hospitals in Sri Lanka. The project 'eHealth Solution for the ETU at the Colombo South Teaching Hospital' is based on the research which was carried out by Dr. Mudith Karunathilake, Medical Officer presently attached to the Colombo South Teaching Hospital - Emergency Treatment Unit and Dr. Shahani Weerawarne ,Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Sciences & Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Moratuwa.
The scope of the project is to develop a system to manage the functionality of the hospital. This system mainly focuses on following features to be improved,
1. To provide an efficient patient care services.
2. To provide an easy patient tracking system.
3. To manage medical records with efficient in a single registration number.
4. To eliminate wastage drugs and surgical items.
5. To manage human resources more efficiently.
There are two major different categories of processes related to the ETU; clinical processes and Human Resource function processes. But in this project concentration is only given for re-engineering the clinical processes.
ETU interact with 13 units of the hospital. Currently there are basically 27 identifiable processes existing in relation to ETU service delivery of clinical process. This large number of different processes is a big disadvantage to provide an efficient service to the patients. According to the research carried out by Dr.Mudhith, we can reduce all 27 processes to the following five main processes. Each process has its own set of duties.
1. Patient registration and electronic health records - deals with patient registration from the point the patient enters the hospital to the point where the patient gets discharged. This section also has to handle the health records of the patients. Having such a separate section helps to prevent patient getting repeatedly re-registered each time he/she enter to a new ward or unit.
2. Investigations and results - From the point of ordering an investigation to receive confirmation of samples and the result availability is managed through this process. The results were ultimately incorporated to the electronic health records automatically, for storage and easy dynamic retrieving.
3. Supply chain management - Ordering drugs, surgical items and any other stores item is manage through this process. Ultimate objective of the process is dynamic supply of items without ETU involvement.
4. Support service management - From the request of a service to the completion of the task is managed through this core process. With the trend of outsourcing non-core services supervision too, is enabled through this process effectively
5. Death certification - From the point of death certification, to the issue of the death certificate is managed through this core process. The medico legal process too can be incorporated to this process in future when extended to other wards and units.
The final outcome of this project is to develop a system that will automate time consuming tasks such as documentation done by the staff at the ETU and to minimize the wastage. Also to provide a framework that enable the system to be expanded later to be used in all the departments which are already connected using a fiber optics network at the Colombo South Teaching Hospital and the other hospitals in Sri Lanka.
There are some risks involved in this project when it is applied to the real world. This system will change the structure of the hospital and this might cause some employees to lose their jobs. This may lead to a panic in the Sri Lankan health care system and can cause some problems. Security of the electronic health records is a main concern in this system. Therefore this system should provide a high security but with low cost.
- Thesis of the research done by Dr. Mudith Karunathilake, "Business Process Re-Engineering for the Emergency Treatment Unit at The Colombo South Teaching Hospital"
- http://www.opensource.org/osr
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