HC1041: IT for Business - Healthcare Industry - Report Writing Assessment Answer

IT for Business Assignment

Assignment Task

Impact of IT on Healthcare Industry

Introduction:

Different studies show that IT is an enabler to implement business process rather than a tool (Davenport, 1993). IT is the best enabler in business in case of different business change, co-ordinate process and improves process performance. IT allows information storing, retrieval and management in a most efficient way. Most of the small and medium sized business adopts IT for its progression of business operation that tends to economic development in the country. Information technology particularly Internet is mandatory of any types of business for the survival and growth of country’s economy (Hicks, 1993). By adopting new technology, the business is increasing due to flexibility, speed, lower cost and high efficient communication to other stakeholders. The adoption of technology like using e-mail and having a company’s web site or advertising the company using social media tends to increase the business operations, business profit and revenue, reduce costs, minimize waste, and devote talent to core business, better customer service as well as better communication to stakeholders. So, IT is very necessary for doing business operations smoothly and rapidly.

IT and business sectors:

Most of Australian Company adopts IT and implements the policy of BYOD (Bring Your Own Devices) for employees. This system encourages the employees to bring their own Laptop, Notebook, Tablet etc. into the organization and work with these devices by using Company’s own Wi-Fi or local intranet. This system enables the employer for cost savings of devices as well as increases the productivity of the business.

Knowledge and information are essential key factors for production. The present business society is changing and known as “knowledge society”( Lucy, 2005). The technology adopted company produces high quality of goods and services in the society. So, the business enterprises need high quality information, store them, process them, transform them to produce superior products or services better than competitors (Pollard, 2006). Due to globalization of business economy and technological development for the last two decades, the production is increasing as well as offering new business opportunities. At the earlier age, labour and capital were two factors of production but information and knowledge are now two important factors for increasing production. Information is a main resource in the Brisbane Market at Australia where a computerized SPM (Scientific Pest Management) system is required to collect necessary data by reading barcodes of the products. So, to survive the Brisbane Market , IT adoption was necessary. To get accurate, rapid and relevant data, computerized system in the business is mandatory that tends to increase production and service. Managers need information to plan, organize, staff management, risk control as well as taking managerial decision.

In today’s competitive business environment, most of the organizations used to adopt IT for their efficient business process. So, to survive in the competitive market, adoption of IT is mandatory for each and every business.

Application of IT into Health care Sector:

From the case study health care services using IT at CentacareCQ, it is found that the following requirements are necessary for implementing IT in their healthcare services,-

• Cost: In the technological budget the necessary costs include initial cost (hardware, software and training cost), maintenance and up gradation cost, hosting, networking equipment costs, internet costs and support costs. But due to the online movement, some open source software would save costing as well as equipment costs are one-time investment that needs slight maintenance costs periodically.
• Planning and Designing: To implement information system into business, three types of systems must be considered, TPS (Transactional Processing System), MIS (Management Information System) and ES (Expert system). DSS( Decision support system) and EIS (Executive Information system) are two subsets of MIS. The DSS is actually a computer based system that is used to analyze the organizational data and presented it in an efficient and effective way for taking business decision. For example, the DSS provides comparative sales for a month or different decision alternatives in case of revenue generation. To plan the IT into business, the DSS plays a vital role for their survival into the highly competitive environment (Al-Zhrani, 2010, p.1249-1251).
• Equipment: The latest technology for implementing IT into healthcare business by CentacareCQ is the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. The business should use client/server technology, Internet/Intranet, CALS (computer Aided Acquisition and Logistic support), e-commerce etc. The equipments include hardware, smart phone by which customers are able to access travel routes from their home, network devices etc.
• Installation: The ERP software is properly installed and their website is launched. Their developed apps for smart phone are downloaded by the customers.
• Training: Effective customer training is required due to the adoption of new technology. Employees are able to handle their business process through computerized system by an efficient hands-on training.

How Healthcare Industry uses IT:

CentacareCQ Company uses IT in their business. The company has more than 100 mobile workers who can visit information, timesheet confirmation, automatic alerts and record data during visit on their smart phone by the Home Care Manager software. Their internal coordinator can manage payroll system, timesheet, recording data, verification and printing by this software in real time. Customers and suppliers are their external stakeholders. Customers can get valuable information, route direction, and book an appointment for counseling and case management service in real time with their apps.

The devices like PC, Laptop and tablet computers are widely used in business. Internet access is another important consideration for using IT in business. High speed internet access through smart phones is essential. From the survey report of ICT indicates that only a very small number of business (e.g., microenterprises) use Internet cafes. Computer and smart phone is now popular web presence in the business sector. Web presence is mostly used in larger firms. Several studies found that Internet was growing faster from 2004 to 2006 and reached about 56% in business sector with dial line narrowband connection or high speed DSL broadband connection. Mainly the service industry like hospitals, real estate businesses, schools and colleges took this opportunity for an inquiry facility as well as marketing products.

From research, it is revealed that the adoption and usage of IT tends to a Diffusion of Innovations perspective (Rogers, 1983). The factors include are information sources and communication channels (Nilikanta, 1990), individual user characteristics (Brancheau, 1990) and innovative characteristics (Moore, 1987).

Benefits from IT in Business Sector:

From the different case study, it is shown that Australian enterprises are using smart phone and other mobile devices to make their business in an efficient and effective way. The organizations are using BlackBerry, Dell, HP laptop and mobile devices which have great advantages in their business. Due to the advent of Apple’s iPhone in the business, their business operation, transaction and communication was very speedy, cost-effective and flexible.

From the study, it is found that IT allows faster communication, electronic storage as well as protection of data to the business. The following advantages are found from different researches in business industry using IT,-

• Automated Process: Due to the using of business application software, the various business operations like creating queries, reports, track data, monitor financials, storing and retrieving data are done automatically. So, the workers are free to work other things in this time that tends to increase the productivity. From newsletter (November, 2000). published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco explains the IT improves company’s efficiency and revenue due to their automated process.
• Flexibility: IT system has great advantage to work in a flexible manner. An individual can work on company’s electronic network remotely. He/she can access the company’s devices from their home or road and work on it.
• Communication: It is the blood of a business. Employees and managers of a business enterprise using IT are able to communicate with their stakeholders by Email, video conferencing and internal chat rooms. This communication is done in an efficient and cost-effective way along with very speedy.
• Information protection: There are different information protection mechanisms available in IT application like password protection, various authentication mechanism, and firewall system etc. so that hackers cannot access the valuable business records.

During the time of business transaction over the Internet, the security of data for buyers, suppliers, business partners and other stakeholders are very important. The integrity and privacy of information to the customers must be guaranteed by the business. Many business uses security seals on their website to gain stakeholders’ trust (Hu et al. 2003).

Risks of IT bring to business:

In today’s business environment, the different business sectors use cloud based system. It is a modern application of remotely hosted IT services also known as cloud apps. The different applications like E-mail, business application, health care, data mining, mobile and many more are done in cloud based environment in a very cost-effective and flexible way. But there are lots of risks and sensitivity issues by using this system that are discussed below,-

• Web-based email is the largest cloud computing service. The cloud computing e-mail solution offers hosting an e-mail server that is accessible from anywhere. The confidential e-mail data can be accessed by anyone from anywhere. It breaks the privacy and security issues.
• Authenticity, privacy and confidentiality of the data into the E-mail system require a great security mechanism.
• The email access through cloud application is needed to secure its infrastructure as well as tenant virtual machines.
• The tenants can secure their own virtual machine (hosted in the cloud) by proper anti-virus, anti-malware and host-based intrusion detection system. But, cloud supplier offers security to the tenants due to limitations. So, it may be a great risk for securing virtual machine.
• The security is concerned with the majority of servers, users and networking in cloud environment.
• Cloud administration supplier provides the asset allocation and scheduling that can be utilized by the cloud client. So, protecting data and files are most important in transit.
• The most important point is to secure principle server, communication channel as well as transaction between them.
• The client distributed environment can be secured by equipment encryption system. (H.zhu, 2011)

Monitoring and maintaining of IT:

From different case studies, it is observed that the different businesses are using IT in an efficient, cost-effective and secure manner. The businesses naturally use application software; e-commerce application, cloud based system etc. need proper maintain and monitor the whole system. It can be described as follows,-

• Maintaining and monitoring the security and record protection of the system periodically. Ensuring that data will be accessible only to the authorized users as and when required. Information should be accurate and complete and maintain it properly by a highly secure database server.
• Maintaining the equipments and networking devices periodically by renewing anti-virus and firewall. Updated software features can be added with existing software. Hardware, software and network updating is mandatory periodically.
• To maintain and monitor the IT application in business, a tool like CPS (cyber-physical system) is recommended that interacts with other software. By defining the trustworthiness of CPS, the system can perform as expectation and meet all requirements. The tool uses the concept of automatic computing and MAPE-K model (Kephart , 2003). The Monitor component of this system is used to collect events from the system, store them into a database and perform processing to compute trustworthiness matrices. After receiving alerts from Monitor, the Management component identifies threats and selects the best control to mitigate the threats. The Mitigation component is responsible to execute the best selected control.