IT Implementation in Healthcare

Question: Discuss about the IT Implementation in Healthcare. Answer: Introduction Silver Chain Group provides community health services to the people and operates in four different regions of Australia as Queensland, New South Wales, Western and Southern Australia. Being in the country for over 100 years, it is a non-profit organization that has a marked reputation and quality services all over (Silverchain.org.au, 2016). The range of services that are provided by this group is huge and some of the examples are Wellness services, health care and maintenance services, counseling and advisory services, support and care, assessment services and personal alarms. Requirement of IT for Silver Chain Group On a per year basis, the group covers more than 87,000 people for providing of the services and care and the same is executed with the help of over 3000 staff members and approximately 400 volunteers. Paper-based records were used to maintain the client information which made it difficult to access and also resulted in frequent loss and misplacements. The management and storage of the same also emerged as the big concern for the organization. It was getting troublesome for the staff members to gather data around their respective clients and resulted in decrease of productivity and efficiency as well. It was extremely required to improve the customer satisfaction and also enable the various entities to provide a medium to easily communicate with each other (LeMay, 2014). Importance of IT for business survival Following are the factors and reasons which mark the importance of IT for the group. Preparation It is the task which includes data collection for various sources and is made easy by the help of IT. Planning Creation of project plans, project schedule, budget plan and various other planning diagrams is a simple task through IT tools and software. Practice It is necessary to adhere to the defined protocols and norms. IT makes it possible to follow the best practices and guidelines that have been suggested. Progress checks It is next to impossible to monitor each and every staff member and the activity going around through manual means. IT helps in the frequent performance and progress checks. Phases for implementation and use of IT Silver Chain Group took the aid of an enterprise level solution and also launched a mobile application for reaching out to a larger number of people and also to provide quality services to them. Android was the operating system that was selected for the development of the app and the same was customized for many different mobile devices such as Samsung Galaxy S2, S3, S4, Note and Note II smartphones, and Samsung Galaxy Note 8, 10.1 and Tab 10.1 tablet devices to direct care staff and clients (delimiter, 2016). 1. Planning This is the initial phase which includes the necessary planning to be done around the scope of the project, goals and objectives, assumptions, entry and exit criteria and likewise. 2. Requirement Analysis There are a number of different Stakeholders that are involved with the Silver Chain Group such as investors, customers, partners, owners and many more. This phase discusses the project with all the essential stakeholders and prepares a set of requirements and specifications accordingly. 3. Design The next phase in the list is the design phase which revolves around the design diagrams and documents such as design specification document, data flow diagrams, use case diagrams, functional hierarchies and decision trees to understand the design of the project. 4. Implementation This is the phase where the practical application of the earlier three phases begins. For the health solution and mobile application, the design is brought in real-world implementation and the same is used for the further process. Database team also works to create a strong back-end. 5. Testing It is an activity which is used to find out the errors that are present in the system. It is done in a phased approach and comprises of the phases such as requirement analysis, design phase, development phase, execution phase and completion phase. It makes use of test conditions, test cases and test scenarios and reports the bugs in the defect report. The closure report is created once the exit criteria are met (Softwaretestinghelp.com, 2016). 6. Deployment and Maintenance This is the stage where the final product is deployed for the end-users and the issues that arise after that are reported and tackled (Ghahrai, 2015). Use of IT in Silver Chain Group IT would help the staff members of the Silver Chain Group to communicate easily with their clients. It would also provide a mechanism to the nurses and doctors to have a conversation easily and also seek guidance through video conferencing. Families who are located in different areas would also be able to easily connect with each other. Accessibility and availability of the direct care staff would also improve by a huge margin. Advanced technology such as notification to the nurses if the readings go beyond an acceptable number would be sent and likewise. Risks involved with IT The IT solution for Silver Chain Group would be implemented in a mobile application as well. The information associated would be of high degree of protection and the loss to the same could emerge as a serious risk for the group. There is varied information that is associated with the group and has potential risks. It has been categorized as follows: Sensitive: The data is to a great degree basic to the association and requires a high level of assurance also. The social insurance data connected with the customer is extremely critical and can't be hampered with. Confidential: This is the classification of data that holds high significance for an association and should be secured precisely. The data around the partners and the accomplices required in the organization is classified in nature. Private: It is the individual data that is connected with the organization and incorporates the points of interest of the workers, for example, demographic data. Public: The data that is alright to convey out to the general visibility and learning goes under this class. There are several risks to the confidentiality, integrity, privacy and authenticity of the data and some of them are as described below: Virus It is a project or an arrangement of guidelines that is vindictive in nature which implies that it has been intended for giving harm or damage to the framework. It gets presented in the framework through capacity media or system. Spyware These are the projects that catch the action of the client on the frameworks and can be utilized to give a considerable measure of harm (Spychecker.com. 2016) Backdoors Backdoors are utilized to hamper the credibility and approved access to the framework by softening up to the framework security. These are utilized to sidestep the security component and may demonstrate to a great degree unsafe for the instructive foundations by entering in the zone of private and secret data. Logic Bomb It is another arrangement of code that is malignant in nature and gets activated by a specific movement or an activity. It requires certain conditions to be met with a specific end goal to get enacted and once it does, it can possibly split away the security of the framework. DoS Denial of Service The service is made unreachable for a specific duration of time since it is overloaded and flooded with unnecessary traffic from unreliable sources (Digitalattackmap.com. 2016). Spam It is the utilization of electronic informing administration and frameworks to send spontaneous messages in mass. There might be email spam or texting spam. If there should be an occurrence of an instructive establishment, these may bring about spam in online journals, web gathering spam, long range informal communication spam, or record sharing system spam. (Ttu.edu. 2016) Phishing A fake site or email message is utilized to mimic another person's personality so as to increase delicate data (Ttu.edu. 2016). Recommendations It is possible to maintain and monitor IT for the Silver Chain Group with the help of a few countermeasures to the risk and structured methodology as: Use of security tools and software such as anti-virus, firewalls and internet security Proper access control mechanism for the maintenance of confidentiality and integrity of the information Adaptation of encryption techniques for transfer of data Analytical tools for analysis of huge amount of data Time to time up-gradation of all the tools and processes that are used in the system Structured methodology for project management and resource management Conclusion Silver Chain Group is an organization that works for the betterment of people of Australia and works through four different locations. There are a huge number of employees and clients that are associated with the group. The management of all of these along with the track of each and every single activity is just impossible through the manual processes. It has thus been suggested to make use of IT in the business and the group has come up with an enterprise health solution and an Android based mobile application as well. These would not only help in the management of services but would also improve the customer experience and accessibility to the organization. There are a set of risks that come up due to the involvement of IT and these have the potential to hamper the confidentiality and security of the information. Countermeasures such as use of anti-virus, internet security, network monitors, encryption techniques and access controls are very effective to control such risks and atta cks. References delimiter, (2016). [online] Available at: https://delimiter.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/NBX-Case-Study_Silver-Chain_Mobility.pdf [Accessed 31 May 2016]. LeMay, R. (2014). Android in the enterprise: Three Aussie examples from Samsung | Delimiter. [online] Delimiter. 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