The design and development of a fully integrated hospital information system

This paper provides an overview of the design and development of a comprehensive integrated hospital information system for the National Cheng Kung University Hospital. This system was designed for a new hospital, to be built on a 'green field' site, and was developed and installed as an integral component of the building of the hospital and the installation of the medical and administrative facilities. The approach necessitated: 1) the specification of requirements with no users to explain what they needed; 2) a study of capacity without the availability of existing data to predict the workload; 3) a performance study in advance of operation to understand system behavior; and 4) the effective scheduling of implementation to ensure congruence with the building and commissioning of the hospital.