Impact of information system integration on the healthcare management and medical services

ABSTRACT

Medical care combined with information technology is a new trend and the completeness and consistency of information directly affect the efficiency and quality of healthcare services as well as the safety of diagnosis and treatment. The level of internet information technology is reflected in its realization degree of integration between information systems and processes. This concept is defined as Information Systems (IS) integration, the degree to which data and applications are shared and accessed over different communication networks. In order to fully realize IS integration, ensure security of the massive medical data as well as efficient, smooth and real-time sharing, and to realize scientific analysis and processing, all the technologies including internet technology, cloud computing, Internet of Things, Data Analytics, and Blockchain should be utilized. This paper reviews the previous studies in this field and puts forward the related concepts. With the analysis of the literature on IS Integration, we find that the development of IS Integration of healthcare management and medical services is worthy of advocacy and promotion although there are still different obstacles to be overcome. Opportunities and challenges coexist in the development of IS integration.

KEYWORDS:

• Information technology integration
• data sharing
• big data
• healthcare services
• clinic decision

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to thank Professor Xia Weidong from Florida International University for providing materials and giving valuable suggestions to improve the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zijian Wu

Zijian Wu, Ph.D., is an administrator of healthcare and physician in Guangzhou, China. He has a Ph.D. in management from University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE), where he studied the public healthcare policies, management theory and research method used in hospital. Before ISCTE, he earned his Master degree of clinical medicine in TCM from Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine. He currently works as a secretary of Ethic Committee and attending physician in Cancer Hospital & Institute of Guangzhou Medical University. He ever served in Guangzhou Liwan District Community hospital as a general practitioner and assistant director of hospital for 3 years. He recognized clearly the prominent problems existing in primary medical care in China and he has always been holding a wish to conduct a research aiming at learning more or even solving the problems of the community hospital in China. His latest paper, ‘Analysis of functional status Meridian in different types of TCM constitutions’. was published in 2011 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine Workshops in 2011. His health science articles of TCM frequently appear in the journal named Pharmacist in Family. When he has spare times, Dr Wu loves to play football and hang around in the art museum.

Virginia Trigo

Virginia Trigo, PhD., is Professor Emeritus at ISCTE University Institute of Lisbon and Director of two Doctoral Programs in collaboration with Chinese universities. Her academic and research areas cover the areas of Human Resources, Organizational Behavior, Entrepreneurship and Cross-culture Management. She has over 20 years of experience of living and working in China and her doctoral thesis was a longitudinal study (1993–2001) on the upsurge of private entrepreneurship in China focusing on the Tianhe Technological Park in Guangzhou. She has a post-doctoral fellowship from the Lester Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, University of California, Berkeley and has taught in several continents. She was the founding president of the Institute for Tourism Studies in Macau and received a medal for exceptional achievements and an award of merit from the Government of Macau in 1997 and 2001 respectively. She also won the honorary title Commander of Public Education of the Portugal from Portuguese government for the sake of her remarkable contribution in education. She is the author of several books and articles some of which published in A rated and indexed journals. Her research interests are in the areas of Human Resources, Organizational Behavior, Entrepreneurship and Chinese Business Culture.