Health care managers need to understand evaluation mechanisms to determine whether to purchase or build systems. Also, when the purchase option is selected, they must decide whether to procure fully integrated turnkey solutions or individual best-of-breed packages to be integrated by the facility. A major strategic issue in healthcare settings is how best to support the concept of the Learning Organisation. Health care professionals need to appreciate how strategic information systems will be used to address this need. As well as the selection of information systems acquisitions or development projects, managers and other health care professionals must address the issue of new system implementation and how best to deal with change within the health care facility. How to evaluate performance of health care systems - evaluation of individual components of a system may not indicate overall system performance. Managers must understand the dependencies between different areas of the system in order to develop models that can quantify its performance. This module intends to address these areas and give health care professionals an appreciation for the strategic impact of IT system adoption within health care facilities. Explores the evolution of information systems from transaction-based systems through management information systems and the current emphasis on strategic information systems. Explains why information is now seen as a strategic asset for organisations in general. Assesses the strategic use of health care information systems. Costs and benefits of information systems - hardware, software, personnel, maintenance. Economics of information systems development versus acquisition Acquisition strategies applied in health care settings. Strategies for quality improvement. Self-managing teams within health care settings. Evaluation of Healthcare IT - Benefits/Value realisation. Evaluation principles and tools. Benefits and value definition. Linkage of value to system development. How IT can make evaluation easier. Reviews the area of change management in the contest of IT implementations in health care settings. Application of ERP systems to health care organisations. Business Process Reengineering in health care settings. The use of business intelligence systems to enable the timely collection and efficient reporting of key performance indicators that facilitate improvements in health care operations. Incorporation of training to enable effective HIT deployment and use. Adoption of IT to enable transformation of healthcare organisations. Relationship of leadership, behaviour and technology domains.

Define, distinguish and discuss a wide range of requirements concepts and terminology including quality and other types of non-functional requirements. Select and justify appropriate requirements elicitation techniques for use in a given project or situation in the health domain. Select and justify appropriate requirements analysis techniques for use with different kinds of stakeholders in the health domain. Plan, describe and justify how requirements would be elicited, verified and validated with the stakeholders in different project situations but in particular those that characterise the health domain. Using a specification template such as the IEEE-830 or the Volere template, specify the functional requirements for a given software project or system from the health domain. Evaluate statements of non-functional requirements such as Usability, Reliability and Security for implementation in healthcare information systems and medical devices. Evaluate the suitability of new or proposed requirements techniques and/or practices for adoption in the health informatics domain.

Analyse the concept of outsourcing of IS development and assess how appropriate this strategy is in different health care contexts. Relate various methods for evaluating and justifying IT investment. Assess the wider set of implementation issues that surround the adoption of an IT based system in a health care setting.

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