A model for cloud-based hospital management systems for South African public health sector.
Magudulela, Thembokuhle
Magudulela, Thembokuhle
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Abstract
Real-time access of information in the Healthcare environment is essential as it not only helps medical personnel to have adequate and timely information, but it also assists patients to be served more easily. This can only be achieved if hospital management systems and their sub functionalities are easily accessible just-on-time. This necessitates the Hospital Management System (HMS) to be deployed in the cloud environment so as to reduce the limitations of poor and intermittent networks, low bandwidth, as well as insufficient information technology (IT) human resources. When successfully implemented, the cloud-based HMS increases efficiency, scalability, and overall performance of the health system by sharing resources with many devices used by different personnel within the healthcare sector - especially in developing countries such as South Africa that are widely challenged by poor technological infrastructure. Much as this is so, literature indicates that there is still lack of appropriate models customised to the South Africa context to inform the deployment of HMS into the cloud. Hospitals, especially those in rural areas, are operating at a low bandwidth, and have poor IT infrastructure that causes intermittent networks leading to disruptions and slow service delivery. The goal of this study was to develop a model for cloud-based HMS for the South African public health sector. Data for this study was collected using a close-ended questionnaire from district municipality hospitals in Gauteng Province, South Africa, and analysed quantitatively. Results indicated that social aspects, followed by risk analysis and control as well as organizational aspects are highly significant antecedents in developing a cloud-based HMS model. However, the results also indicated that environment aspects’ contribution too is valid, but not significant. This study contributes to the ongoing call to have seamless healthcare provision systems, especially after the challenges of Covid-19 that saw many countries struggling to provide healthcare services due to lockdowns. The model developed in this study is expected to extend the research of modernizing healthcare provision by leveraging technological innovations. This study recommends that future research should involve the analysis of interacting effects of individual users’ demographics in order to have a better forecast for future consistent usage of cloud-based services.
Description
Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Computing: Informatics in the Department of Informatics: Faculty of Information and Communication Technology at the Tshwane University of Technology.
Date
2023-02-16
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Tshwane University of Technology
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Keywords
Healthcare environment, Technological infrastructure, Hospital Management System (HMS), Cloud-based, Public health, South Africa