IT DEPARTMENTS IN HOSPITALS: ROLE AND BENEFITS
Hospital IT departments have an essential role to play in assisting hospital staff to manage and care for patients. These systems are so essential and ingrained into modern-day hospitals that it can literally be a matter of life or death if they stop working effectively.
Table of contents
- The importance of IT services for healthcare
- How DeskAlerts can
benefit hospital IT departments
- DeskAlerts case studies from IT
departments in hospitals
THE IMPORTANCE OF IT SERVICES FOR HEALTHCARE
The IT department of a hospital is not only responsible for managing clinical
software and the other processes that help administrative staff to keep
patient records and admissions systems ticking along, they also have an
important role to play in ensuring medical wards, operating rooms, labor and
delivery suites and emergency departments run smoothly.
Some of these functions include billing, registration, health information
management, ordering and receiving lab results, and specialist software for
things like radiology or IV pumps.
This is in addition to the usual tasks an IT department of a hospital performs
such as providing network infrastructure, IT security, server maintenance,
software deployments and so on.
IT departments in hospitals are also responsible for desktop support and running the help desk. The support staff working in this particular area don’t generally require a clinical knowledge, but support the computers, laptops, printers and hospital computer devices.
Like in other organizations, they will take phone calls when users have issues and help to work through a solution or escalate to elsewhere as the first port of call. And while they aren’t clinical experts, having a basic understanding of various applications used by different areas of the hospital will help them to escalate specialist software and hardware issues to the right place.
Understandably, help desks in hospitals can be overwhelmed at times when there are many issues on the go at once, or even if there is a widespread outage that is causing mass frustrations and issues for users throughout the hospital. Getting systems up-and-running again when there is a problem is critical. Peoples’ lives depend on hospital computers and other infrastructure being operational.
HOW DESKALERTS CAN BENEFIT HOSPITAL IT DEPARTMENTS
Many hospitals and healthcare organizations around the world have turned to DeskAlerts to help manage their helpdesk communications and take pressure off IT staff.
DeskAlerts is a unique internal communications software solution that sends mass notifications to users using a range of different channels that can be sent to screens of computers used in hospital, digital screens and mobile and tablet devices. It is useful for letting everyone know at once if there is a known issue, taking pressure off help desk staff.
Where it isn’t appropriate to send notices to every screen in a hospital – for example if just one department or ward is affected – the software can be used to target selected users’ screens – for example, everyone on specific hospital camps or just the surgical team.
As not every staff member will have their own computer in health care, sending information to digital screens in common areas as well as to mobile devices will help keep your entire workforce informed.
Benefits for IT departments in hospitals include:
- Using different channels including pop-up notifications, digital signage, scrolling desktop tickers, corporate wallpaper, corporate screensavers and more.
- Bypassing the email system and avoiding information becoming missed
- The ability to schedule messages in advance
- The ability to deliver image-rich content or videos or send links to intranet content
- Can be synchronized with other internal systems such as CRM or Sharepoint to send notifications immediately.
- Emergency notifications for healthcare can be coordinated with color codes that are already being used.
- Ability to gather instant feedback from employees through surveys and polls.
- Ability to quickly keep people informed amid rapidly changing situations, such as what is being experienced in hospitals during the COVID-19 response.
Credit: #Caroline Duncan
Research By: #Emmanuel Kow Nyame Hammond
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