Weighing Scale Integration for Smart Hospital Information Systems

Tamer Ö.

JOURNAL OF AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE AND HUMANIZED COMPUTING, vol.2021, no.1, pp.1-12, 2021 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 2021 Issue: 1
  • Publication Date: 2021
  • Journal Name: JOURNAL OF AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE AND HUMANIZED COMPUTING
  • Journal Indexes: Scopus, Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Compendex, INSPEC
  • Page Numbers: pp.1-12
  • Dokuz Eylül University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

Background: Today’s healthcare information system networks include many detached hardware devices. Most of these devices need to exchange messages with other devices within the network, i.e., local machine to machine communication.

Objective: The resulting information must be displayed in real-time at nursing stations, on doctor pagers and administrative mobile phones. Furthermore, the devices far from the administrative and clinical engineering offices frequently need to be remotely reachable. State of the art Information and Communication technologies have become widespread in smart healthcare services.

Method: This study proposes an integrated solution named “Weight Scale Integration for Smart Hospital Information Systems” to connect the weighing scales of the drug preparation systems to the Hospital Information Systems (HIS), using the latest hardware and software technologies. Drug preparation data is sent instantaneously over the local network, from the drug preparation systems to the HIS database, for later analysis by doctors and administrators. In the first phase, a custom weighing scale device was designed. In the second phase, the design was implemented and integrated into the HIS.

Results: The hardware device and the communication server software developed in this study satisfy all clinical, legal, and administrative requirements; by storing every patient’s complete prescription data automatically and instantaneously in the HIS database.

Conclusion: The newly developed system improves the quality of healthcare services, decreases costs, and ensures monitoring of activities, while complying with international healthcare information standards.