Hospitals are facing a multitude of challenges at various levels including patient care and administration. It’s important to reduce labour and operating costs, enable our staff to work more efficiently, optimize space efficiency & comply with changing regulations without compromising the patient experience.
Smart solutions in terms of technology (software) will help overcome these challenges and will enable the effective utilization of all resources (4M’s Men, Machine, Money and Method).
Important factors to be looked into while deciding the selection of an appropriate software:
Analyse the need for new software – It is very essential to decide the right time to go for new software. Changing a software is not an easy job, it’s a time-consuming process, re-learning by the staff is laborious & the management needs to spend their valuable time in the implementation.
Price – Before we buy, we have to determine our budget and consider brands accordingly. We must calculate the upfront installations, integration cost, training cost, annual maintenance cost (AMC) and updation cost. The additional costs of features to be considered in the future also needs to be looked into.
Demo – Nowadays, it is very easy to have a demonstration online, but before we plan for a demo, we must know our exact needs & specifications and be clear of our existing systems and process and process flow. In simple terms, we need to be clear of what we exactly want.
During the demo, give your 100 % concentration, as it’s common to have a take-for-granted attitude as we believe we know this process/module and lose out understanding of some important aspects. Make a list of points and ensure that you have a great understanding of the software and solutions to your problems.
Involve your users – Users must be part of the demo and the selection process because they can provide the best feedback regarding requirements. Each department should participate in the selection of their respective modules.
Staff Training – We must understand that inadequate knowledge of the software could/will affect the hospital. Staff training is required to educate them about all available modules, report generations, mining of data and privacy of data and security. Training must be started even during the trial/pilot implementation and PPT’s/videos must be collected from the vendor.
Customisation capabilities – We might have checked HIS systems and its features completely, but chances are there that we might miss the speciality that is needed for us, and the possibility of customisation relating to our needs to be looked into. For E.g., if you are paediatrician, then ensure that you select a vendor who is experienced and made HIS in paediatric speciality.
Updation and support – Service backup is a very important step in the selection process. Check whether the vendor will be able to provide online support for problems. We must fix the responsibilities, roles, onsite, offsite support of HIS vendor clearly and the implementation monitored/reviewed properly. Finally, the availability of on-air upgrades also needs to be looked into.
Comparison – We must be clear of our budget, features and requirements that we need for our hospital before we finalize the vendor. We must compare their prices, ratings, duration, stability, training, security and support with a minimum of 3 vendors at least. More becomes tricky sometimes.
Credentials check/Reviews – We need to check for the background of the company that we are finalizing. Search for their customer base in your location/city/region and leading or clients from the branded hospitals. We must look into any quality/certifications if any and clients in the industry for better results.
Cloud-based & subscription model HIS – The world in general is turning towards cloud-based systems and moving away from a physical server maintaining systems. Cloud-based systems are easily adoptable for many branches. It saves money as we do not have to invest in server, manpower & other resources managing it. The data loss which is quite common otherwise is avoided. Cloud-based subscription models are becoming popular in the healthcare industry.
Technology gives data and data is everything!
There’s no question of whether someone needs software or not; the question is which is best suited to our needs.
Importance of Hospital Consents
