Building a Fully Integrated Hospital Information System

This paper provides an overview of the building of an integrated hospital information system for the National Cheng Kung University Hospital. There are two features of the systems development process to which this paper seeks to draw particular attention. The first is that the information system was to be a comprehensive integrated system addressing the range of information needs of users in all functional areas of the hospital. Secondly, the system was to be designed for a new hospital to be built on a ‘green field’ site and was to be developed and installed as an integral component of the building of the hospital and the installation of the medical and administrative facilities. The paper describes the approach adopted to: the specification of requirements with no existing users to explain their needs; the study of capacity without existing data on which to base predictions of workload; the study of performance in advance of actual operation in an attempt to understand likely systems behaviour; and the scheduling of implementation to ensure congruence with the building and commissioning of the hospital. The successful outcome of the development is reported.