Healthcare Information Systems

Healthcare reform arising from the consumer’s demand for cost-effective health access, services, and quality requires a new, previously unimagined health delivery system. The healthcare industry, administrators, and care providers are challenging traditional approaches, structures, roles, practices, and information system technology. Healthcare organizations are exploring such avenues as continuous quality improvement, managed care, patient-centered reengineering, integrated health networks, and a computer-based patient record. The traditional hospital information system is changing to provide for the management and processing of patient-centered data, information, and knowledge across the healthcare continuum, patient’s life span, windows of time, and diffuse organizational and geographical boundaries. The traditional hospital information system has now become a healthcare information system.