Acquistion of Information Systems Selection and Acquisition

¶ … Acquistion of Information Systems

Selection and Acquisition of Information Systems

Selection and acquisition of information systems could involve an enormous investment for a healthcare organization. Besides the initial costs that organizations need to incur, there are also long-term costs associated with maintenance, support and enhancement of the information system. Selecting the right information systems that would meet the need of an organization is a critical step to consider when selecting and acquiring the information systems. To select information systems, it is critical to evaluate the costs and benefits as well as gaining insight on the full constituents of the users.

Fundamental objective of this paper is to discuss the process of selecting and acquiring the information systems for our healthcare organization.

Process of Selecting and Acquiring the Information Systems

System acquisitions are the process of selecting a new system in order to replace the old information systems. The process of system acquisition takes place from the time decision is made to replace the old information systems to the time the contract is negotiated and signed. The following approach is critical in the process of selecting and acquiring the information systems for our healthcare organization:

Establishing a Strategic Planning

The first stage in selecting and acquiring the information systems is to formulate the strategic planning. The strategic planning is the process of aligning the IT acquisition to the strategic goals and the IT strategic planning is to make available the necessary financial and human resources needed for the selection of the IT process. The process of planning, selecting, evaluating and implementing our healthcare information systems is called SDLC (System development Life Cycle). (Wager, Lee, & Glaser, 2009).

The process of selecting and acquiring our information system should start from organizing a multidisciplinary work team under the leadership of a physician to establish the work plan. The work team should include key stakeholders within the organization and they should compose of a nurse, office manager and the administrator. It is also critical to include HIM (Health Information Management) Professional in the work team to provide an advisory role. The role of work team is to ensure the smooth implementation of overall selection and acquisition of information systems for our organization.

Identification of the Problems

One of the major roles of work team is to develop the overall plan to formulate the IT strategic problems that the team will attempt to solve. The primary focus of work team is to assess the current IS (information systems) and identify the problems within the current IS. The identification of the problems will assist the organization to identify opportunities for improvement. The planning should also include the feasibility of the new information systems and assess whether the organization has adequate financial and human resources to implement the new project. More importantly, it is critical to evaluate the new system to determine whether it is financially, technological and operationally feasible to carry out the new project.

Information needs of the Users

The next step is to define the information needs of the users and use this to design the functional requirements of the new system. Within our healthcare organization, the selection of the new information systems should address the goals of all stakeholders, which include healthcare providers, human resources personnel and financial planner within our organization. To provide inputs of the entire stakeholders in the design of our new information systems, the work team should use interview and survey technique to collect the feedback of all stakeholders. The feedback will assist our organization to design functional information systems that would meet the need of all stakeholders.

Thus, our new information systems will be EHR (Electronic Health Record) designed to deliver all individual health information such as financial historical health information, and pharmacy records. The core functions of the new systems are to enhance patient care support process, care delivery, and financial process. More importantly, the core functionalities our new health information systems should be as follows:

Improving worker's efficiency

Improving patient safety

Supporting effective patient care delivery system

Facilitating the management of chronic conditions

Design Phase

The next stage is design phase. System design is the process of evaluating the alternative solutions in order to address the business problems. Since our organization only specializes in the quality healthcare delivery and does not specialize in the information systems design, effective strategy to use in designing the new information systems is to use HIS (health information system) vendor.

Selecting an Appropriate Vendor

The next stage is the selection of vendor. This stage is critical in the acquisition of information systems because effectiveness of our information systems will depend on the competency of vendor selected. In selecting the vendor, our organization should use online strategy for vendor search. The next step is to conduct a comprehensive screening of vendors that submit interest in our proposal. The screening process will include evaluating the past performances of vendors, and contacting references that vendors provide to identify the top contenders. We will also use the certifications that each vendor possesses as selection criteria. Our organization will use these selection tools to select top 8 vendors from the list of vendors.

Request for Proposal (RFP)

The next step is to use request for proposal for the evaluation and selection of appropriate vendor. RFP is a document that informs vendors about the products and services desired. The RFP will describe our current hardware and operating environment. The RFP would also include our current equipment, infrastructure, and software specifications. Moreover, RFP should include the overall costs of the new project and the delivery date of the project.

The RFP will instruct the vendor our organization goals and objectives to ensure that the new information systems are compatible with our goals and objectives. Through RFP, we will provide the detail requirements and specifications of our new systems, which will include overall technical requirement of the new systems, interfacing capabilities, security, support and maintenance. Since our organization is requesting for EHR, the core functionalities of our new systems should contain the following:

Health information and data

Results management

Order entry and management

Decision support

Electronic connectivity and communication

Patient support and administrative processes

Reporting and health management. (Johnson, 2006).

Vendor Demonstration

Vendors' demonstration will be the next stage where vendors will be required to present their products in a live environment. The demonstration will be an evaluation tool to select an appropriate vendor for the project. Following the vendors' presentations, the work team will rank vendors based on their presentations.