Study Proposal

Electronic Health Record

Health Information Technology or HIT is a multidisciplinary field in health sciences that strives

to enhance clinical practice efficiency via the design, development, and management of various

electronic systems. The fundamental use of HIT is seen in the development and deployment of

systems, tools, and procedures that may be efficiently designed and implemented in order to

acquire, store, retrieve, and apply principles of current practice nursing care and biomedicine to

enhance health outcomes. There are several hard and software applications of health information

technology; this article describes one of the best and most highly sought after uses of health

information technology, the Electronic Health Record (EHR) project, as it is implemented using

the Agile Project Life Cycle.

An electronic health record (EHR) refers to the digital or electronic version of patient’s chart.

Electronic health record provides patient-centered and real-time records of Personal Health

Information (PHI) of patients instantly to the authorized healthcare personnel. EHR contains

records of patient’s medical history, medication, diagnosis, treatment plan, immunization dates,

as well as, personal information including name, age, family information, billing, and details of

insurance. The primary goals of EHR are to reduce medical errors and inconsistencies, language

barriers, miscommunication, and to implement effective management and secured sharing of

patient’s confidential information. Hence, electronic health records aim to automate the

management of PHI, enhance the quality healthcare services, and ensure welfare and prosperity

of the community
 Electronic Health Record Project

The electronic health record project aims to switch the manual healthcare information system

with the electronic health record system in a Hospital. The electronic health record project will

be designed, developed, deployed according to the protocols of Agile Project Life Cycle. The

Agile Project Life Cycle is dedicated set of guidelines that consists of well-defined sequences of

steps the product (EHR software in this case) from start to finish. The Agile Product Life Cycle

is based on collaborative decision-making and iterative process of developing functioning

software. The six phases of agile products life cycle include: concept, inception, iteration,

release, maintenance, and retirement.

The stakeholders first establish the scope, mission, and aim of the software to be built and

deployed. In the EHR Project, senior management will meet with regional healthcare agencies to

determine the scope (described below) of the EHR project. This is followed by conception or

requirement identification, in which the software development team informs senior management

about the needs (both tangible and human resources) such as front-end and back-end developers

with the necessary resources and tools. The majority of the bulk work is completed in the third

step, iteration, which is the creation of EHR software by merging all of the data and resources

obtained in the previous two phases. This approach is continued until the necessary software

characteristics and functionalities are achieved. The fourth phase, release, is carried out by the

Quality Assurance team, who install the EHR software on a limited scale to search for any

mistakes or faults while also gathering user input. After the fourth step is completed, the product

is put into production. Fifth, maintenance refers to the finished deployment of software on a

large scale and making it available to users. Finally, a product is retired for one of two reasons: it
is being replaced with new software, or the system has become obsolete or incompatible with the

organization ove

time.

Electronic Health Record Project Scope

The Electronic Health Record Project aim to transform the manual entry of patient’s health

information into the electronic version in order to save the patient’s information and develop the

health chart. The Project lead is responsible for the development and deployment of EHR system

in the Institution of Cardiology and Hospital. The aim of the project is to increase the logistic

productivity to ensure smooth workflow, share the information with other healthcare providers,

and to secure the PHI of patients.

Project Team Members and Competencies for Electronic Health Record Project

The Electronic Health Record Project requires a cross-functional team and member from diverse

educational and work expertise. For example, top management for approval, team lead for

monitoring the progress, developers for the development of software, quality assurance for the

testing, finance manager for allocating finances, and human resources for hiring or allocating

human resources. Likewise, the competencies required for the EHR project are also wide, for

example, expertise in programming languages, data structures, computer network, problem

solving, organization and planning, leadership, software testing, statistical analysis, and so on.

The team will be managed by the top manager and department-specific supervisors through

regular check-ins and weekly progress reports.

The EHR needs can be classified in to 7 major categories which include order entry, billing

appointments, general documentation, clinical charting, general documentation, reporting, and

patient access. In addition, the key capabilities of an EHR system are as follows: (1) longitudinal

collection of electronic health information for and about people, where health information is

defined as information pertaining to an individual's health or health care provided to an

individual; (2 immediate electronic access to person- and population-level information by

authorized users; and (3) provision of knowledge and decision-support that improves the quality,

safety, and efficacy of health care.