Functional Area Of An Organisation Information Technology Essay

There are a variety of functional areas in a structured business enterprise, depending upon its size and nature of service. Here in the Medication management System can be viewed in a broader manner as hospital is not the only one entity. The manufacturer, vendors, receiving staff, prescribing doctors, pharmacists, nurses and the clients are all involved and thus an integrated system is to be ultimately developed which benefits all users of the system at different levels. The information system does mean not only the software, but also the hardware, users and other related systems. So our objective is to identify all the functional areas of the organization as a whole and to develop a cost-effective and efficient system which would minimize the human drug dispensing errors and reduce the mortality rate in turn. For this we need to have a clear understanding about the different systems at different levels like manufacturer, vendor and hospital.

Information needs within functional area of an organisation.

Organisations have a number of people working together towards a definite objective, although they work in different functional areas. One output of one functional area can be the input of another area and the accurate timely information is necessary to get an error free result. Organisations completely depend on the information systems and advanced technologies which makes them excel and efficient. Functional areas of organisations are defined according to the type and nature of work that is involved in a department. The main functional areas of each and every organisation are listed below:

Human Resource: Human resource management is one of the most important yet often underestimated aspects in the organizational operation. It basically is the operating system of the whole organization that makes sure that it run smoothly, coordination and cooperation takes place regularly and finally makes sure that everyone within the organization is satisfied with the working conditions. Superficially, it is supposed to do day to day tasks like recruitment, training payroll processing etc. but actually the scope for HRM is much more than that. Especially in the highly competitive markets of today, they can play a pivotal role in building a highly performing and competitive firm by nurturing and enhancing the skills of the employees and ensuring cooperation. This is a functional area where various personnel who administer and handle the drug are interviewed and selected.

Financial Area: This functional area analyses various financial aspects of the employees and keeps track of the accounts receivable and payables. The financial advisors must plan in advance regarding the future financial objectives of the company. In order to achieve the desire profits. The finance department need to maintain the financial records in order to show these accounts while paying the tax. And another key function of finance department is to calculate the salary and payroll system which is the main function of finance department. Accounts are maintained for different vendors for which internal auditors and accountants are employed.

Marketing and Sales: In this competitive world the organisation cannot survive without marketing the products. Organisation is investing a huge amount of money in order to market the products through different channels like television, radio and other medias. So that people came to know about the products and will buy the company’s products. Nowadays the competition is really high; the companies are forced to give discounts and other promotional activities like holidays and gifts to push their sales. To conclude with, marketing is also a key part in achieving company’s objectives.

Production: Production is one of the main functional areas of a business organisation. All the products of a business organisation are developing under this functional area. The staffs under this functional area should enquire all the products should develop at the right time and the products have good quality. The organisation should buy good quality raw materials. These raw materials will be stored near to production area. Nowadays most of the productions are automatically with the help of robots and other machines. The operator need to check only the production line is correct or not. Production is also involves preparing items for despatch. The items should packed cleanly and very attractively. In this stage, the bar code system can be incorporated which should specify its batch number, product code/name, packing, lot number, date of manufacture, chemical combination, type of med’s, route of administration, dosage….etc

Customer Service: Customer service is the one of the most important functional area of organisation. This includes functions like answering the client’s enquiries about the product and services, provide well information about the customer’s need, solving client’s problems, Provide service after sales which include replace, repair etc, dealing with the problems of customer, analysis the problems of customer and store these problems etc.

Comparison between the functional areas and information needed for each functional area

Functional Area

Functions and information needed for functional areas

Human Resource

The main functions of this functional area are recruitment, training, payroll etc. The information needed for this functional area are the information about the employees, their salary, about new vacancies, about new applications, employees in payroll, attendance, absence and overtime details…etc.

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Financial Area

The main functions of Financial area are calculate the salary of employees, checking payrolls, recording money received, produce invoices, checking the payments received and chasing the overdue payments etc. In this functional area should have the information about income of company, expense of the company, salary of each and every staff,times sheet of work, attendance and overtime details…etc. They also need to have the customer’s bills details, payment received and bills payable details to the vendors.

Marketing and Sales

The main functions of this functional area are Market the products through different channels like radio, mail television, producing publicity materials of their products such as catalogues etc., designing and promoting the website of company. This functional area should have the information about new trend of market, in what way the company can get maximum product, which is the good way to publish their product in market, in what way the company can improve their sales etc.

Production

The main functions of this functional area are buying raw materials, storing the raw materials, planning the production schedule, Checking quality of product throughout the production, packing the items cleanly and beautifully, storing the items very safely. The information needed for this functional area are list of available raw materials, Combination formula, Machinery and manpower availability, Quantity of each product to be manufactured which in turn is reported by the feedback from sales and marketing area, product details like batch number, packing…etc.

Customer Service

The main functions of this functional are answering client’s enquiries about products, solve client’s problems, dealing with the problems of customer, analysis the problems of customer and store these problems etc. This functional area should have the information about what range of customer they have, the customers are satisfied with their product or not, what are the customer’s need for a particular product etc.

Information needed for medical management system

The medical management system is a complex system involving the manufacturer, hospital, and the administrator of medicines. Therefore, a well defined data flow has to be clearly identified. Identification of appropriate data that is involved in each system is a key factor for the success of this system. Several data are needed for the proper functioning of the system. First of all, the details about the following are absolutely necessary.

1) Prescription details

2) Product details

3) Patient details

4) Administering person’s details.

5) The medical staff

6) The vendors of medicine

INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Different types of Information Systems

An information system is a combination of hardware, software procedures used to generate information which is used to administer and control the day to day activities of users in an organisation. It consists of five categories.

A) Office Information Systems (OIS)

B) Transaction Processing System (TPS)

C) Management Information System (MIS)

D) Decision support system (DSS)

E) Expert System (ES)

Office Information System (OIS)

It is a kind of information system that depends on hardware, software and networks to provide communication solutions and working efficiency among a staffs in an organisation. Office Information System is also known as Office Automation. In this kind of an environment the data processing is done electronically instead of manually hard copying it. For example In an organisation with several branches if a new line is released it can be updated through the OIS over the network. If they don’t use OIS they would have to manually process it and post it to its branches.

Transaction Processing System (TPS)

TPS is a form of information system that records and processes transaction done in an organisation on each day. A transaction can be an order, a payment, reservation or a cancellation. TPS generally uses two type of transaction processing.

a) Batch Processing

b) Online Transaction Processing

In a batch processing all the transactions are collected during the day and it’s processed as a group or a batch at the end of the day. In online Transaction Processing the transaction is processed as soon as it is entered into the system. In batch processing the invoice cannot be generated then and there. But in OLTP the invoices can be generated then and there.

Management Information System (MIS)

In an organisation various tasks are performed on a day to day basis which involves invoicing, monitoring track progress, generating sales reports etc. An MIS is a kind of information system that generates accurate daily reports. So the authorities of the organisation can monitor and track the overall performance of the company by making decisions, solving problems and watch the track progress. This process is usually done by a type of MIS known as Management Reporting System. For example in an organisation when a sale is done the product which is being sold is first entered into the system, invoice generated and finally the product being deducted from the inventory. These data helps the managers to take decisions in improving the overall company performance.

Decision Support System (DIS)

A Decision Support System is used to help the staff in an organisation to take decisions when a complicated situation arises. This system collects data from within the organisation and from external sources such as the internet to help the staff in decision making. This information system needs to store huge volumes of data. These data as store in large databases called data warehouses. The data warehouse stores and manages the data required to help the staff in complicated situation.

Expert System (ES)

In an expert system the machine (computer) collects information and the knowledge from human beings and helps in the decision making process of the people who have less expertise and experience. They mainly use a technology known as AI (Artificial Intelligence). AI is the process of applying human intelligence to computer systems. An AI computer can sends problems and deliver expert opinion by analysing the users previous experience data’s aiding to take a decision and complete the task.

Office Information System – is used to almost all the areas of an organisation wherever administration needs to be done.

Transaction Processing System – Financial Area

Management Information system- HR

Decision support Information system- Customer Service

Expert System- R&D

The current trends in using MMS to solve the problems facing HHS

As far as healthcare is concerned patient data is the most crucial and sensitive data. In the current situation the patient’s data is manually entered into a branch where thy walk. If the patient walks into a different hospital the treatment data is either e- mailed or a hardcopy is carried from the previous branch to the new branch. This procedure has some advantages than the old systems. If the patient carrying is carrying a hardcopy the data will not get destroyed or damaged unless carelessly treated by the customer himself. If the customer’s diagnostic data is e- mailed to the next branch the data will reach the new branch without any hassle and in seconds. In this case the customer need not carry a physical hardcopy of the files. These techniques will help the HHS introducing incomplete reports, wrong medical history and even patient deaths.

INFORMATION PROCESSING TOOLS

Various Software Tools

Text processors

Text processors are specific software, which comes as a part of the big software that is used to process documents, prepare presentation, and manipulate accounts and mange a database. One of the famous text processor software is Microsoft Office. It contains Word for document processing, Excel for processing spread sheets, Access for managing databases and Power point for preparing presentations. In an organisation preparing presentations for meetings, issuing invoices to patients, maintain accounts and managing patient’s database is crucially important. If Microsoft office can be used in such an organisation all these requirements can be met.

Databases

In medical environment, patient history is very important for the treatment of the patient. In a medical organisation software such as Microsoft Access can be used to store patient information. But Access cannot be used in a network and does not have much functionality and cannot be customised according to the needs of the organisation. In such a case specifically designed software can be used to manage all these functions.

Client Server

In a hospital there are different departments and functional areas, each requiring it’s on computer systems. A patient who is being treated for and ailment will be referred from one department to the other. So the staffs need to carry the reports and the data from every department from where the patient was treated as a hardcopy which is a big headache. In that case implementing client server architecture will be beneficial. In this architecture all the computers in every department will be connected to a centralised server which will store all the patients and database records. So if a patient is referred from one department to the other the next department can access the treatment history through the server. For this purpose the server and the clients need to have customised software.

Current Information method used in HHS

Currently the HHS uses a network blast infrastructure for data management. If a patient walks in to a hospital the patient’s ID and the treatment procedure is entered on to a system and then the prescription is given. When the patient walks into a different branch the details of the treatment from the previous branch is e-mailed to the new hospital for references. But as this information are stored and processed by computers errors can happen at any time, such as data lose, virus attacks, missing information, and incomplete reports and so on. The doctor who treated the patient primarily will exactly know what the patient is suffering from and about his vital statistics better than the latter one. As data a critical in a hospital these errors can cost a patient his/her life. In earlier times the information was processed as a hard copy which is given to the patient upon the completion of the treatment. If the patient loses this information his life is again at stake. The current processing methods need to be refined so that no patients will die in the future due to overdoses or incomplete report.

The most modern method

Information is very important and critical in today’s world. In hospitals barcode technology is taking over the traditional information processing methods. In barcode technology the patient is given a wrist band upon being admitted in the hospital. The wrist band will have a unique patient ID which is in the form of a barcode. I.e. each patient is given a unique barcode. Software will be used to generate the barcode and will store the treatment data and the details of the staff and the doctor who worked with the patient throughout the treatment. The staff of the concern will also carry identification badges which will have unique ID’s. When the patient is being given a medication by the staff it will be recorded into the system who gave the medicine, the type of medicine and the time. For this first off all the staff scans and enters their barcode into the machine then the patient’s barcode and finally the code on the drug. The doctor’s prescription will be entered into the system before the medicine is given. If there is a change in the medicine the system will sent out distress alarms to prevent misuse of the drug, thereby saving the patient and the staff

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