Evaluate an existing information management system within healthcare Case Study

Evaluate an existing information management system within healthcare organization in the Abudhabi hospitals - Case Study Example It is evident from the argument of research scholars that implementation of IMS in hospitals is a pertinent but hotly debated topic. Hence, the researcher has decided to dig deep in this topic by shedding light on existing IMS in hospitals of UK. Description and Functional Evaluation In UK, majority of hospitals are covered under the supervision of National Health Service Estate hence these hospitals show the common tendency while implementing a new IT application. Puig-Junoy (2000) and Tsai and Molinero (2002) have pointed out that in most of the cases, hospitals implement a new system in order to decrease the patient management cost. However, these researchers have suggested that hospitals should implant those systems which can save money and time of patients and deliver service in profitable manner. E-Prescribing has been selected by the researcher as the IMS to study in this paper. Hospitals like Chelsea and Westminster Healthcare NHS Trust has already been implemented the e-Pres cribing in order to manage cost of servicing patients (European Commission, 2012). Although e-Prescribing might sound like it’s the electronic version of formal prescription but in real scenario it’s much more than prescribing. E-Prescribing is the modified version of patient management facilities which requires active involvement of stakeholders such as doctors, nurses, patients and many others. Generally hospitals such as Chelsea and Westminster Healthcare NHS use e-Prescribing as packaged software but there examples, where hospitals use customized version of e-Prescribing. Now, the study will try to understand what exactly meant by e-Prescribing. NHS Connecting for Health (NHS CFH) (2009) has defined E-Prescribing as the information management system which is created in order to facilitate and enhance the communication of medicine order or prescription, increasing the options for administration of hospitals to provide medicine to patients in accordance with their pr escription, creating decision support and audit support system for the hospital to manage medicines used throughout the treatment of patients. In simple words, objective of e-prescribing is to manage patient information in efficient manner and help the hospital to audit its medicines used per patients. Many of the UK hospitals create the link between e-Prescribing and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) in order to help audit section of the hospital to conduct the cost-benefit analysis of its patient service. Implementation of e-Prescribing system is stepwise process which involves the engagement of various clinical stakeholders such as doctors, patient care division in the hospital, Information Management and Technology (IM&T) professionals, senior clinicians, senior managers etc. Specifically, IM&T is responsible for providing technical and infrastructural support to e-Prescribing (NHS CFH, 2009). E-Prescribing cannot be viewed as simple automation of manual task function for presc ribing medicines rather than it should be viewed as transformative process. For example, using e-Prescribing empowers doctor and nurses can change the traditional prescribing process and indicate the