Data Requirements for Royal Rundle Hospital System

The scenario for this assessment is a multi-specialty hospital system, the Royal Rundle Hospital (RRH), that provides a broad range of services to the community which include surgical, maternity, obstetric care, dialysis, emergency, mental health, aged and palliative care, allied health services and a 24-hour emergency department. The RRH has been serving in the region for over 50 years and has been using paper-based forms and documents to store and manage all the data with some use of spreadsheets that started not so long ago.

Now that the management of RRH wants to take the advantages of Information Technology to maintain and manage the records of the various aspects of the hospital system more efficiently, they have put out a Request for Proposals (RFP) for appropriately qualified consultants to undertake a body of work that would help to scope the data requirements for such a system. With your success in your Torrens University Australia degree so far, and other similar projects that have garnered you some sustained success in the eyes of the profession and community, you have been shortlisted among no less than 10 other consultancies. There are expectations from them, then, as to the standard of report you will produce.

The Royal Rundle Hospital (RRH) is a multi-specialty hospital that includes a number of departments, rooms, doctors, nurses, compounders, and other staff working in the hospital. Patients having different kinds of ailments come to the hospital and get checkup done from the relevant doctors. If required they are admitted in the hospital and discharged after treatment. The hospital maintains the records of various departments, rooms, and doctors in the hospital besides the most important records of the regular patients, patients admitted in the hospital, the checkup of patients done by the doctors, the patients that have been operated, and patients discharged from the hospital.

In RRH, there are many departments like Orthopedic, Pathology, Emergency, Dental, Gynecology, Anesthetics, I.C.U., Blood Bank, Operation Theater, Laboratory, M.R.I., Neurology, Cardiology, Cancer Department, Corpse, etc. There is an OPD where patients come and get a card (that is, entry card of the patient) for check up from the relevant doctor. After making entry in the card, they go to the relevant doctor’s room and the doctor checks up their ailments. According to the ailments, the doctor either prescribes medicine or admits the patient in the relevant department.

The patient may choose either private or general room according to his/her need. But before getting admission in the hospital, the patient has to fulfill certain formalities of the hospital like room charges, etc. After the treatment is completed, the doctor discharges the patient. Before discharging from the hospital, the patient again has to complete certain formalities of the hospital like balance charges, test charges, operation charges (if any), blood charges, doctors’ charges, etc. Next, the management talks about the doctors of the hospital. There are two types of the doctors in the hospital, namely, regular doctors and call-on doctors. Regular doctors are those doctors who come to the hospital daily. Call-on doctors are those doctors who are called by the hospital if the relevant regular doctor is not available.

The management believes and understands that the benefits of an IT solution to manage and maintain their records are enormous and hopes to gain a thorough insight that should come from a lot of forethought and design elements fed into it before it could be seriously considered by them. The RRH management seeks consultation on what the data requirements of such a system might be.

There are two objectives of this assessment:

1. For the purposes of the client, the Royal Rundle Hospital (RRH) management, you are to produce a design brief and,

2. For the purposes of the assessment, you are to produce a reflection.

So, this written submission should expertly mix a consultative style—that is, providing a solution to the problem as outlined by the client—with a deep reflection on what you have learned in the subject and the potential for such an automated system. You will need to use your judgement on this, it is likely to take several drafts to get it right. The deliverable for this assessment is plainly:

You are required to create a consultative report that addresses the data requirements of the proposed Royal Rundle Hospital (RRH) System as well as commenting on the feasibility of such a solution, given what you learned in the subject. Following instructions will assist you in completion of the task.

Some hints for you to heed while you develop and write your assessment:

• Consider all aspects of the hospital’s operations and flows of data and then explore the benefits and challenges that an automated system may present in regard to effectiveness, efficiency an also adaptation issues, when implemented.

• The RRH management has not provided any assumptions and you should list these if your proposal and reflection are to be considered cogent.

Based on your learning from the course modules and previous assignments, you are expected to come up with data requirements and a logical design of the system and a brief commentary on the design.