INFO 331 WK5: Business Processes and Your Information System

INFO 331 WK5: Business Processes and Your Information System

1. In terms of how the system helps users achieve business processes, discuss the impact of your IS on the Organization or on the Users.

2. How are business processes incorporated in your IS to gain a competitive advantage?

3. Make three concrete recommendations for improving your information system

Before the advent of a digital picture archive the information from patient imaging was contained on film just like a polaroid camera. You take a radiograph and process the film internally to have a presentable image for a doctor to review. These had to be manually moved from exam room to reading room then to patient folders, and if a patient was going to change doctors or needed to go to a different hospital for treatment the hard copy film would need to go with them. The PACS helps to expedite these core processes through centralization, maintaining a consistent workflow and building in tracking and reporting functions to review information.

The workflow used in the system ensures that information automatically moves between different users when each step of the image processing and acquisition is completed. This standardized workflow ensures that images can be reviewed efficiently and as quickly as possible improving outcomes and care through reduction in information delays. Additionally, all of the information is centralized for access from multiple locations by multiple users. This ensures the first available person can review the images and provide information back to the patient and ordering physician instead of siloing the information within a single facility. This functionally increases any single facilities capacity to perform imaging studies and allows for increases in specialization by increasing the base workflow. Finally, the built in reporting function allows for assessment of a number of different components of imaging. Time stamped entries into records, tracking of when information goes to the server and how the information is processed lets administration review how and when information is being processed based on set standards of operations and allows for refinement of different processes and training for employees.

Improving the system could be done with a few different functions, eliminating step-wise processing of information, automating information review and reporting, and using a centralized data system to initiate the image acquisition process. Currently, the system uses multiple self-contained ordering systems to pull information regarding patients. This has resulted in information inappropriately transcribing into the wrong record. Automated information review and reporting could be designed to review access to information and send out reports automatically regarding when information is accessed compared to the time the images were taken to better understand potential delays and to identify potential delays more rapidly. Finally, eliminating step-wise information processing, while the information is being processed it cannot be viewed until a user labels the information ready for review. This slows down final reporting, but prevents reviewing information multiple times. Standardizing parallel processing from the time of acquisition would be difficult, but could speed up finalization of the image information and additionally increase the speed to diagnosis for patients.