Because healthcare facilities deal with saving lives on a daily basis, they have to be equipped with top-notch equipment and systematic procedures to make the transactions that happen within them flow smoothly at all times. Furthermore, it must also be safe from security threats such as data tampering and intrusions.
Privacy must also be highly considered as patient confidentiality is always regarded as one of the core principles of all healthcare systems. To increase the overall efficiency of modern-day hospital, the following methods must be implemented.
Interconnection of the computer that hosts data-scanning devices
To make the process of letting doctors and technicians read and interpret the results of body-imaging devices, the computers that host them must be networked together in a central hub.
Although it is possible for advanced networking technology these days to directly network devices like, MRI, ECG, and X-Ray, it would be impractical to do that because of the underlying costs. The more practical method would to connect them to a standard computer, which is the norm these days, and connect those computers that host them via ethernet adapters.
Depending on the size of the network or the number of computers to be connected, the exact number of ports that the designated ethernet hub must have could vary. The standard speed of 100mbps should be good enough to handle the process. In situations where other computers are located more than 200 meters away, Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) devices should be employed to extend the reach of the hospital’s network.
For better data management, archiving the scanned images would be the best option. They could be stored as photographs or as high-definition images with high compression rates. In this way, they could be stored in great numbers without the fear of having overcrowded storage disks. A database system application must also be installed on every computer that hosts the imaging devices so the data that flows through them can be queried and sorted efficiently whenever the need arises.
Interconnection of computer workstations including handheld devices
In addition to the interconnectivity to be implemented for those imaging devices, all workstations including handheld devices such as tablets and smartphones designated for hospital use must also be networked as well. This is to ensure that all relevant data can be stored and accessed seamlessly whenever there is a need for them.
Aside from the hardware requirements that this method requires, software upgrades and installation must also be conducted. One of the most important system programs that must be included is a Network Operating System. The IT staff may choose from either of these 2 ideal options: Android GNU Network OS, or Windows CE, which are specifically built for networking mobile phones or tablet devices.
For the desktop and laptop computers of the hospital, Windows Advanced Server or Ubuntu Linux must be on top of the list. Windows is a proprietary kind of software that requires additional budgeting since it needs to be licensed. If such an expense is too burdensome for the hospital administrators, choosing Ubuntu would greatly help because it is an open-source kind of software – it requires no licensing and can be freely used and redistributed by anyone.
Furthermore, Linux distributions can also be modified by anyone with sufficient computer programming knowledge. This could greatly help the hospital staff if they want a specific kind of function to be integrated into their systems on the software aspect of the structure.
Wireless access within the hospital vicinity
To implement this, a high-speed Wi-Fi network must be installed. Like the standard ethernet hubs today, the fastest Wi-Fi adapters today have a speed of 100 Mbps, with a frequency of 2.5 GHz. It should be fast enough to handle the file transfer demands among portable devices as well as among standard desktop and laptop computers. As stated above, the presence of WAP devices must also be available so that the constraints in transfer data rates where signals are weak in some areas of the hospital can be addressed.
Since wireless networking is more prone to unwanted access compared to wired networking, certain restrictions must also be implemented. This requires the installation of additional mobile apps so that only certain kinds of data and only the designated personnel can handle data and pass them to proper channels at only the right moments.
A custom-designed application should be crafted for this. For a cheaper alternative, standard spreadsheet programs or database programs that can be found in typical Office Productivity software may be utilized. However, certain network privileges must be executed so that only the designated people can have access to certain kinds of data.
Cloud server data storage and retrieval
Making data backups is among the most important tasks that any digital facility must-have. And since medical information is a very crucial kind of data, it must be stored in very safe locations. While storing digital files within the same location where the hospital is can be very convenient most of the time, it would be an unsafe area in cases where natural disasters and other unpredictable events may take place.
The best solution for this would be to store data backups on a cloud server. The good thing is that such an undertaking does not really require a huge budget. For instance, Google Drive can be freely availed by anyone owning a Google account.
But such a free allocation is only limited to 15 GB as of the moment – too small for the needs of a hospital. To have a much bigger data storage space, a fee of $6 per month can provide 30 GB of space. By doubling the amount, the space allocation could be increased up to 4 times the size.
The advantages of storing data files on a cloud server also offer great convenience on the part of the hospital personnel because they can access them relatively anywhere, as long as internet connectivity is present. Of course, it requires another set of access restrictions which will be discussed in the later parts of this article.
Data access restrictions for specific personnel/employees
As mentioned in the introductory paragraph of this paper, digitizing a healthcare facility's methods make it very prone to threats and attacks. To combat this problem, a strict password policy must be implemented.
The best way to prevent anyone from ever guessing passwords is to make them a mixture of letters, numbers, and special characters. Every password to be used by any employee or even by the administrators must not be too short, they have to be at least 8 characters in minimum. Better yet, making them 12 characters in length would be even more ideal.
Even for a supercomputer, it would take years to guess a very complicated password. Furthermore, employees should be encouraged to change their passwords from time to time. This is to make sure that digital intruders and cybercriminals will not figure out a pattern so it will be much harder for them to guess passwords even with their digital password generators.
It would be wise to let the employees store their passwords in an encrypted file so that only authorized people can open them. To further strengthen the security of the hospital’s network issuing SSL-based digital certificates among data-accessing employees must be implemented as well. This is to ensure that data tampering and hacking threats will be kept very minimal.
Robust external auditing
One of the problems of digitizing data and documents is repudiation. To deal with this, robust auditing via external means must be implemented as well. The most important system to make his happen is by establishing a clear and solid hierarchy that will guide the personnel as to who are the proper channels that they should deal with or address.
For instance, even though the doctors seem to be the most important employees of a hospital, they must not be higher than the database administrator in the hierarchy of data access among the employees. Because the database admins are the ones who will be direct personnel in charge of the handling of data, they should be on top of the hierarchy.
However, in cases where the hospital administrators will issue a directive that a certain doctor or employee must be higher than the database administrators, the directive must be executed because the owners are the highest of all hierarchies of the organization.
Executing the proposed methods
If the above-mentioned methods are already discussed by the hospital administrators and are evaluated to be valid and necessary, they should be implemented as soon as possible. To make it happen, the following steps must be conducted:
1. A thorough briefing of the IT personnel of the hospital, or the outsourcing of an IT group from other companies if there are no in-house employees.
2. Crafting the budgeting documents and system specifications in both hardware and software.
3. A systematic actual overhauling of the system should be done without impeding the non-stop, ongoing daily processes of the hospital.
4. An intensive training of the personnel who will use the newly installed system and equipment.
5. Making a comprehensive report of the initial responses and feedback during the first few days of the implementation. It will serve as the guiding factor that will lead to further improvements that might be needed.
I think some of the things you mentioned are being practiced already in some countries with good and well-managed economies. I think of South Korea which provides one of the best healthcare as I see it through some past researches I did. What about our country? (Philippines) I honestly don't know, maybe only the private hospitals do these.