Case study #2

The government of the Western Province wants to purchase a pre-existing or custom-built EMR management system from a local or multinational company that would lead to improvements in the:

-healthcare of patients
-accuracy of record keeping
-efficiency of the hospital and clinics.

1. What is an EMR management system? What do they typically include? How would they help improve each of the points above? Would they be available in East African countries? Provide evidence for your answer!

An EMR management system is a system is an electronic medical record management system. this means that a hospital can have one management system throughout the hospital and also all of the medical records would be synchronized though out the hospital. this is a good thing because if a patient first goes to the hospital through the ER, the ER will collect some information. then if the patient is having a child they will go up to the maternity ward, and with the information collected in the ER it means that they won't have to collect the information again. Then if something was to go wrong and they ended up needing more testing or an IV the nurse would be able to add to the EMR so that the next time that the patient goes to the hospital there would already be some record on that patient. ie. personal info, allergies, genetic disorders...

An example of an EMR is Advanced MD and it includes -medical billing, no IT stress, back up the database, preform upgrades, allow the user to access the database anywhere anytime, via the web. almost completely eliminates lost medical record, IT help when needed for free. Advanced EMR which is by the same company just more advanced also features, same thing except Advanced EMR allows the doctor to dictate the organization of software, so it doesn't hinder the style of the doctor, and also its very easy to use.

Advanced EMR would help the patients because its synced to the web, so if they are transfer to another wing of the hostipal their information would get to that wing almost instantly. It would help the accuracy of record keeping because, if there is not a field that is acceptable for whats needed then they can create another one, which allows the records to be very accurate. and lastly this is very efficient.

2. What options are available for pre-exisiting systems? What are the price points for those systems? What are the advantages and disadvantages to buying a pre-built system?

One system which i talked about earlier is Advanced MD. The Price of this system is $300/number of doctors/ month. This seems expensive, but from their website. everything looks really good, so that the benefits will out way the drawbacks. The price point is 3,600 per year if there is only one doctor. advantages for this program is that within the company, there are options for practices and also options for enterprises so they can talk to each other to create a more comprehensive database. A drawback is the price. If it costs $300 per month per doctor, the price will very quickly grow to be a lot especially within a larger practice.

3. What options are available for custom systems? What are the price ranges for those systems? What are the advantages and disadvantages to buying a custom system?
one very easy and quick custom system would be to just use a spread sheet, and set up a password for it. this would be easy but a major drawback would be that its not as easily integrated with hospitals or more major practices. the idea of just using excel would be an easy fix but not necessarily be a good option but it would get the job done. The price for this system would be to buy the Microsoft office package for the small business, the starting price for this is 449.95. another feature of this package is Microsoft access which could also do the same thing and most likely a better job.

An advantage for a custom system is that it can be the way that you want and that you will not have any questions about the way that they work, or store information, or the security, or how to back up. This is a benefit because the owner will know that they are getting full use of the system. A drawback though, is that they do not have the normal system. this is a drawback because there is a good change that the data will not be able to be transfered from database to database as easily as the Advanced MD program does. another drawback to the custom system is that in the Advanced MD system, it takes care of just about everything, backing it up, sending out bills and everything. So with the custom system the owner of the system has more responsibilities.

4. Make a recommendation to the government of the Western Province; which type of system should they buy? Which options should it include? What compromises will they have to make?

I think that the Government of the Western Province should by the Advanced MD system I think like that because this system is expensive it seems to take a way a lot of the other responsibilities that would be necessary otherwise. One reason that I don't think that they should make their own is that, even thought there are not many hospitals and medical facilities, in africa but between all of the difficult conditions that are going on. it seems like the best thing to do to have one type of EMR, so that while there will be differences with languages, and beliefs, and whatnot but the one thing that the doctors do not have to worry about is that the records will be transfered from one place to another. Thats why the Advanced MD system is the best.