Availability of software services for a hospital information system

Hospital information systems (HISs) are becoming more important and covering more parts in daily hospital operations as order-entry systems become popular and electronic charts are introduced. Thus, HISs today need to be able to provide necessary services for hospital operations for a 24-h day, 365 days a year. The provision of services discussed here does not simply mean the availability of computers, in which all that matters is that the computer is functioning. It means the provision of necessary information for hospital operations by the computer software, and we will call it the availability of software services. HISs these days are mostly client-server systems. To increase availability of software services in these systems, it is not enough to just use system structures that are highly reliable in existing host-centred systems. Four main components which support availability of software services are network systems, client computers, server computers, and application software. In this paper, we suggest how to structure these four components to provide the minimum requested software services even if a part of the system stops to function. The network system should be double-protected in stratus using Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) as its base network. Client computers should be fat clients with as much application logic as possible, and reference information which do not require frequent updates (master files, for example) should be replicated in clients. It would be best if all server computers could be double-protected. However, if that is physically impossible, one database file should be made accessible by several server computers. Still, at least the basic patients' information and the latest clinical records should be double-protected physically. Application software should be tested carefully before introduction. Different versions of the application software should always be kept and managed in case the new version has problems. If a hospital information system is designed and developed with these points in mind, it's availability of software services should increase greatly.