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Cloud-Based Hospital Information System as a Service for Grassroots Healthcare Institutions

  • Systems-Level Quality Improvement
  • Published:
Journal of Medical Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Grassroots healthcare institutions (GHIs) are the smallest administrative levels of medical institutions, where most patients access health services. The latest report from the National Bureau of Statistics of China showed that 96.04 % of 950,297 medical institutions in China were at the grassroots level in 2012, including county-level hospitals, township central hospitals, community health service centers, and rural clinics. In developing countries, these institutions are facing challenges involving a shortage of funds and talent, inconsistent medical standards, inefficient information sharing, and difficulties in management during the adoption of health information technologies (HIT). Because of the necessity and gravity for GHIs, our aim is to provide hospital information services for GHIs using Cloud computing technologies and service modes. In this medical scenario, the computing resources are pooled by means of a Cloud-based Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) to serve multiple GHIs, with different hospital information systems dynamically assigned and reassigned according to demand. This paper is concerned with establishing a Cloud-based Hospital Information Service Center to provide hospital information software as a service (HI-SaaS) with the aim of providing GHIs with an attractive and high-performance medical information service. Compared with individually establishing all hospital information systems, this approach is more cost-effective and affordable for GHIs and does not compromise HIT performance.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 61173127), National High-tech R&D Program (No. 2013AA041201), and the Zhejiang University Top Disciplinary Partnership Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. EMR and Intelligent Expert System Engineering Research Center, Key Laboratory of Bio-medical Engineering, Ministry of Education, College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Qin Yao & Jing-Song Li

  2. Health Information Management Center, Joint Logistic Department of Nanjing Military Command, Nanjing, China

    Xiong Han

  3. Department Information, Nanjing General Hospital of Nanjing Military Command, Nanjing, China

    Xi-Kun Ma

  4. Department Information, The 454th Hospital of People’s Liberation Army, Nanjing, China

    Yi-Feng Xue

  5. Department Information, The 101th Hospital of People’s Liberation Army, Wuxi, China

    Yi-Jun Chen

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  1. Qin Yao
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  2. Xiong Han
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Correspondence to Jing-Song Li.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Systems-Level Quality Improvement

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Yao, Q., Han, X., Ma, XK. et al. Cloud-Based Hospital Information System as a Service for Grassroots Healthcare Institutions. J Med Syst 38, 104 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-014-0104-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-014-0104-3

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