National Health Care Management Information System of South Africa NHC/MIS

16

1.The features and functionalities required in the NHC/MIS system vary from hospital to hospital, and certainly vary from one PHC centre to another, depending on its size and scope of service. Hence the Applications Software of the NHC/MIS should be modular and flexible so that only relevant modules are implemented in each hospital and PHC centre.

2.The significance of the NHC/MIS requirement is such that the Department of Health can provide and enforce:

X Standardization across hospitals and PHC centres. The NHC/MIS would in turn facilitate uniformity in information flow from and between hospitals and PHC centres, allied health institutions and the provincial and central Departments of Health.

X .Efficient use of costly computing human resources within the Department of Health with regard to operational support, enhancements, maintenance and user training.

X Staff circulation: Department of Health Staff once trained in one health care institution need not be re-trained when they move to another.

X

X

X

1.The NHC/MIS Software should be portable across a range of computing environments regardless of power, capacity and type of operating system.

2.Also, the NHC/MIS should enable the portability of the data between different hardware platforms.

3. This would also apply to the geographic differences in South Africa, especially the infrastructure.

yes

no

noted

yes

no

noted

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS must be totally secure and allow different authorization levels for access and use. The NHC/MIS must also guard the confidentiality of personal and sensitive data by, for example, catering for different levels of accessibility at the file, record and field levels.

2. The NHC/MIS must also log attempts to breach the security restrictions.

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS should provide a high level of user-friendliness. In particular, it should have automated and flexible data entry interfaces, a facility for the production of ad-hoc queries and easy to use pre-set reports or to create new ones on a report writer.

2. Also interfaces to graphical and statistical packages will also be required for data analysis and presentation; multi-media support will be an added merit. For the "graphical user interface", see also point (d) in para 6.19 below).

yes

no

noted

A)Whereas the Department of Health will initially contract out the installation of only four modules of the successful NHC/MIS, the bidding NHC/MIS must be proven to be complete and proven to exist as such.

B) "Complete" means that the NHC/MIS should support the functions listed in the following paragraphs. "Proven" means that the system, in its entirety, is demonstrably operational in an existing environment and the bid, in total or part, must not include any costs for 'applications development' or 'modifications'.

yes

no

noted

1."Patient Registration" application and a

2."Master Patient Index" application are the main repositories of the core information on patients.

3.All patient related systems and applications draw on the master patient index information.

4.The NHC/MIS should be able to identify a new patient based on the South Africa Civil Identification Number, and one or more other identities. The NHC/MIS should issue a unique patient identification number to each patient and to permit the use of the same number in all hospitals and PHC centres of the Department of Health. The NHC/MIS must permit registration of new born babies by defaulting the information from the mother's record.

5.The NHC/MIS should issue an identification card with alternative automatic identification facilities (e.g. magnetic strip, bar-code cards, smart cards etc...). It should also be capable of printing patient labels with bar code identification, for use in the wards and other clinical support areas.

6. The system should enable the distinction between South African and non-South African patients and cater for certain specific requisites e.g. the National Health Insurance Scheme and the payment status.

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS should provide, in addition to the normal search facilities, a phonetic search on names. The phonetic algorithm should cater for the typical problems due to non-standard, alternative spellings of ethnic names. The phonetic search could be carried out on a combination of names including family names.

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS must facilitate detection of multiple identification numbers for any patient by providing query facilities to the master patient index on various user definable criteria. The NHC/MIS must enable - for any cases when a patient is found to have more than one Identification Number - the merge of the visit histories of such identification numbers to the one chosen as well as the following options for the other identification number:

1.1Delete the number

1.2Release the number for a new patient; or

1.3 Maintain cross reference to the correct number to facilitate directing the patient to the correct number, if he/she again presents the erroneous card.

yes

no

noted

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS should provide the full facilities for maintaining Patients Records, for all inpatients and outpatients, and enable the following main data categories to be maintained in the appropriate format (eventually, including Multi-Media):

! Demographic data

! General Medical Information

! Treatment history (by episode and/or visit reference)

! Diagnosis

! Discharge Summary.

2.When the patient is admitted or when he/she is being treated in outpatient specialist clinics, a detailed current record should be maintained. Upon completion of treatment or discharge a summary record should be generated automatically by the NHC/MIS, which should enable their verification by authorized medical record staff and should enable any missing information to be recorded in consultation with the treating doctor.

3. At the same time, the result of investigation of the various services should be consolidated. The NHC/MIS should, on completion of the summary or abstract of treatment details, have the tools to render the record non-modifiable. From then on, the NHC/MIS should maintain that as part of medical history, accessible to authorized users.

4.The NHC/MIS must enable the initial definition of a core, or a minimum data set, of a patient record, according to a specified Minimum Data Set:

! unique identifier;

! date and time of contact;

! where e.g. PHC center, Hospital, inpatient care,

! emergency, home visit;...

! health problem (maximum of three per contact);

! type of care provided (medical intervention);

! medication provided (by class or specific type); and

! disposition.

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS must provide easy to use data entry routines using codes for diagnoses and procedures. The NHC/MIS should provide the flexibility to use more than one coding scheme if necessary, for example, during the NHC/MIS introductory phases.

2.The NHC/MIS must also generate various disease-related and services-related statistical reports.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS should enable the patients history to be archived according to set guidelines. And, the system should enable the easy restoration of such data, by those authorized to do so, and to process queries thereon.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS should enable the creation and maintenance of special disease registers(e.g. Cancer, Diabetes, Tuberculosis, HIV, ...), with differing levels of access authorization.

yes

no

noted

1. The NHC/MIS should provide alternative means of maintaining "patient notes". For example, these may be stored centrally in one location or may be decentralized with each PHC center, clinic within a hospital, holding relevant notes.

2.In either case, the NHC/MIS should track the availability and movement of patient notes. The NHC/MIS should permit signing out of the notes when they are physically moved from the storage area and it should be easy for the medical records personnel to indicate when the notes have been returned.

3.The NHC/MIS should also indicate the storage location of the notes. It should also generate a variety of exception reports to monitor location of notes. e.g. notes not returned to medical records department over a certain duration after the borrowing date.

4. Recent patient notes movement details should be on-line.

yes

no

noted

1.Simultaneously, a distributed National Patient Data Base is to be created and linked, via DoHNET, to all hospitals and PHC centres to both contribute to and use the data base.

2. The NHC/MIS should enable any of its features to be organised around central databases and must support different levels of access enabling restricted views of the centralised databases.

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS must permit booking of appointments to specified consultant clinics and other services. Different services within the hospital have different master schedules and the NHC/MIS should be able to keep track of the different scheduling characteristics of each service.

2.The appointments may be given either for a specified time or for a time-bracket and should enable a conscious overbooking and the handling of emergencies. The NHC/MIS should detect conflicting appointments, and enable rescheduling of appointments and hospital clinics, cancellation of appointments and to track no shows.

3. The NHC/MIS should allow requests for appointments to be initiated at remote sites, particularly at the PHC center level, and should issue the corresponding confirmation notification or otherwise.

yes

no

noted

1.A new National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme is to be started very soon in South Africa for the benefit of all South Africans. Thus, the NHC/MIS should have an integrated billing module that can be readily linked to the NHI transactions and information.

2. The NHC/MIS should provide flexibility in billing by relating charge items to billing actions. Billing actions, rates for billing and billing groups must be user definable, and could be at service, visit or episode level. There should be a provision to bill at fixed intervals also. The system should integrate with the inpatient module to transfer the room charges to the patient folio. It should integrate with all other modules so that service information can be passed on for billing purposes. Manual entry of charge items should also be enabled. The system should enable, authorized individuals, to modify a system generated invoice. The system should also permit billing of other institutions, e.g. insurance or other companies.

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS must support the pharmacy functions in these ways: formulary, drug dispensing for inpatients and outpatients and interface to medical stock, mainly managed by the DoH Central Medical Stores. The NHC/MIS should maintain formulary (non-proprietary) names of drugs with supplier information. Selected formulary details should be available to authorized personnel, if necessary complimented by commercially available drug information.

2.The NHC/MIS should provide for entry of prescriptions and medication orders at outpatient clinics or wards. Alternatively, the prescription can be entered by pharmacists in the pharmacy. On entry of prescription for a particular patient the system should display other drugs currently taken by the patient if any. It should also check for allergies/sensitivities, possible drug interaction, contraindications, over dosages, special instructions etc. Taking into account the route, dosage, forms and times of administration, drug labels should be printed for each patient's prescription. The system should have a controlled procedure for the authorization of all issued drugs and should maintain a separate register for controlled drugs and narcotics.

3. For inpatients, the NHC/MIS should maintain patient medication profiles and prepare medication administration schedules with days, times and dosages. The system should support both the imprest and unit dose system of drug dispensation.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS should enable the entry of all patient and non-patient related orders from any work station in any location. The NHC/MIS must cater for different types of orders such as appointment requests for outpatient clinics, laboratory test requests, medication orders, requests for patient notes, radiology etc. The system must have the means to validate each order for completeness and consistency, and to ensure its integrity and, as necessary, to generate a periodic audit trail of all orders generated including the source and destination department. The NHC/MIS should include the means, for those authorized, to review the contents of an order and to authorize these. On authorization the NHC/MIS should have an option to print the order at the source area and at the destination service area.

yes

no

noted

1.A wide variety of tests are performed in hospitals and the NHC/MIS should process the results of all different types of tests and examinations. The processed and verified results should be printed at the service area or at the destination department. If a patient has been transferred to a different unit since the test was ordered, the test results must be automatically printed at the current location of the patient. Test results of outpatients should be printed at a location decided by the hospital.

2.The NHC/MIS must allow printing of results in more than one location. The NHC/MIS must be able to flag results upon which immediate action must be taken. Cumulative reports containing test results over a given period of time should also be provided for.

3. Authorized users should be able to check the status of all orders and results for a given patient.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS should provide automation support for the following laboratory functions:

• Pathology
• Cytology
• Clinical Chemistry
• Haematology
• Microbiology, including bacteriology, parasitology, virology and serology.

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS should provide for entry of test requests either at ward, outpatients, casualties or in the laboratory and should integrate with the Master Patient.

2. Index to retrieve other relevant data. Labels should be produced to assist with specimen procurement and identification and the system should flag hazardous specimens as "High Risk". The system should enable tests to be entered as codes for both individual tests or panels, and enable requests for multiple item tests or test groups for a patient.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS should provide for extensive parameterisation of laboratory tests, including as a minimum the following:

Source Codes

Consultant Codes

Specimen Type Codes

Request comments

Result comments

Individual/Group test codes

Profile test patterns

Quality control and standards

Referred laboratory codes

Work list formats

Antibiotic/organism codes.

yes

no

noted

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS should enable the entry of results either directly from automated analyzers or manually by patient identifier, test code or work list. In the manual mode it should be possible to input results as numbers, coded comments or free text. At the time of result entry access should be provided to view previous results.

2. The system should validate results against reference and abnormal ranges and previous tests. The validation criteria for test results should be flexible and user definable.

yes

no

noted

yes

no

noted

yes

no

noted

yes

no

noted

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS should support these specific aspects for certain laboratory tests:

Clinical Chemistry:

Automatic entry of results from on-line analyzers

Numeric, coded and free text comments with search facilities

Haematology:

Link to automatic on-line analyzers

Cell counting facility for differential and reticulocyte counts

Microbiology:

Entry of organisms isolated and recording of antibiotics for which these organisms are sensitive or resistant

Generation of infection control reports Anatomical Pathology

Entry of results in free text format

Entry of user-specifiable coding scheme.

yes

no

noted

1. The NHC/MIS should allow the various codes to be user definable, covering at least the blood group, genotypes, antibodies, anticoagulants, additives, blood products, fat codes and transfusion reaction codes. The NHC/MIS should maintain donor information and history with facility for screening for quality and quantity. Blood stock operations should cover maintaining information at product/unit level and monitoring the status including expiry date.

2.Other functions to be provided by the NHC/MIS should include request for blood group, cross matching and allocation and recording of blood transfusion or return to stock.

3. The NHC/MIS should have the means to interface with other related services, notably the Blood Bank.

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS should support automation of the radiological and nuclear-medical services. The functions available should cater to scheduling of examinations for inpatients, casualties and outpatients, recording of requests, printing of labels for identification of X-ray films and result recording.

2.The NHC/MIS should enable result entry to be either in the form of free text or modification to standard text blocks maintained by radiologists. Authorized and signed off results could, optionally, be displayed and printed in single or multiple copies either in the X-ray department or in the designated printer of the requesting departments or in the Central Medical Records Section. Reprinting of results should be possible.

3. The system must keep track of all films produced at requisition/examination level and monitor borrowed films.

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS should maintain a waiting list of operations for both inpatients and outpatients. The confirmed list of operations should be used for scheduling of operations taking into account the availability of surgeons, special equipment, anaesthetists and other staff.

2. The NHC/MIS should provide user-modifiable pre-operation(s) checklist(s) which could also be used to enter orders for various services and automatically check the completion of patient preparation procedure taking into account results of all related investigations. The operation list produced for each operation should identify all facilities required including surgeon's preferences. Surgical reports should be entered in free text format. The NHC/MIS should have the facilities to enter operating the are records (anaesthesia, procedure and recovery timings, attending surgeons, actual procedure done, diagnosis etc..) to generate a variety of statistical reports on utilization of operating theatres.

yes

no

noted

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS should also facilitate the maintenance of clinical sub-systems which should integrate with the Master Patient Index to access patient demographic data. A complete patient record in a clinical sub-system should include the following:

! Basic demographic data

! Department treating the patient

! Referral Information

! Important dates [referral, assessments, treatments and follow up]

! Therapist and other staff assigned

! Type of treatment received

! Outcome.

2. The system should enable the review of case histories either by patient or for a given type.

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS should include procedures to guide a responsible nurse through the steps of patient assessment assigning the patient classification from the adopted classification system. The system should convert the patient classification index into required nursing care levels(by nurse type) and indicate the cumulative nursing care required. The system should compare the required and actual levels to generate differential reports.

2. The NHC/MIS should provide for maintenance of standard care plans based on age and diagnostic grouping of a patient. These standard care plans should be modifiable on review by the treating doctor and assigned nurse. As part of the modified nursing care plan, the system should allow recording of nursing notes. The data should be organized in sections and should include expected discharge date, changes in patient classification, personal care, psychological and spiritual needs, nutrition care and notes, diet restriction, required tests and examinations, medication and allergies. The nursing notes should be displayed in the chronological order with each type of note. The NHC/MIS system should interface with master patient index, inpatients and order entry & result reporting.

yes

no

noted

1. The NHC/MIS should provide comprehensive facilities for managing each hospital's and PHC center*s inventory of drugs, medical, surgical and laboratory items, and for the appropriate interface (including transactional interface when needed) to a Management Information System of the Central Medical Stores of the DoH.

2.The system must support user defined classification of items with provision for storing an item in multiple locations. There should be provision to record receipts, requisitions, issues, returns, transfers and adjustments. Multiple items in a voucher should be permitted. The system must be on-line to update the stock balance on confirmation of transaction. Such transactions must be costed on average cost basis.

3.The NHC/MIS should control and monitor expiry dates and to automatically select the earliest expiring batches and warning on soon-to-expire items and, on confirmation, to automatically adjust stock quantity for expired items. The system must generate physical stock verification lists with facility for generation of variance reports and automatic adjustments.

4. The system should generate various consumption, movement costing and analysis reports.

yes

no

noted

yes

no

noted

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS should maintain contract information containing supplier, items, quantity, unit price, delivery period etc. Purchase requisitions are raised from the stores. All authorized purchase requisitions should be automatically converted into bids and/or local purchase orders. Alternatively, the local purchase orders can be manually prepared and then entered into the system. Purchase Orders should be monitored for delivery schedules.

2. The NHC/MIS should allow entry of supplier invoices against purchase orders to monitor the status of the order. The system should also support direct purchases and purchases against quotations, and to monitor vendor performance and to compare price quotations. The system should be fully integrated with its "Stores" functions (paras 5.15.1 to 5.15.3 above).

yes

no

noted

1.Complete facilities inventory including:

• Sites
• Buildings
• Infrastructure
• Equipment (including vehicles)

2.Sites, buildings and infra-structure should be able to be sub-divided into functional departments (e.g. X-ray department) as well as construction elements (e.g. roof or electrical installation).

3.Attributes of the above, including:

• Area
• Capacity
• Utilisation
• Suitability
• Condition
• Remaining life

4.Applications including:

• Facilities analysis at:

C National level

C Provincial level

C Regional level

C District level

C Site level

C

C

C

yes

no

noted

5.-Maintenance management including:

5.1Planned maintenance and Unplanned maintenance:

The system should be capable of printing a work order request slip. For allocation and assignment of work, the NHC/MIS should maintain a table of employees with type of expertise.

The system should print work sheets, the contents of which should be user definable. Completed work orders could be entered into the system to monitor the outstanding work.

5.2Maintenance stores inventory management

The system should monitor all spares for equipment maintenance with the associated cost details.

5.3Energy management

5.4Equipment management (including vehicles)

The system should support the entry of all breakdown reports, either directly by users from their workstations or centrally at a designated location in the Engineering Department.

Such input includes equipment code and/or description, type and details of fault, urgency, requesting department and person.

5.5.Maintenance staff management

- Capital programme management

-Maintenance contractor management (including service level agreements)

5.6 The facilities management module should include graphics facilities connecting to a spatial database.

yes

no

noted

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS must permit flexible accounting including the interactive entry of the General Ledger transactions.

2.It should be possible to define standard journal entries for recurring and allocation entries.

3.It should be possible to define a journal voucher as reversing type so that a reversal entry is automatically passed in the following accounting period.

4.The system should permit unit accounting in addition to value accounting.

5. The general ledger system should provide for full integration with other NHC/MIS applications.

6.The system should of course also provide flexible means for access to and extraction of information for financial auditing. (See also above, para 5.4 on "patient billing").

7. The NHC/MIS should readily interface with the computerised systems of other government departments such as the FMS of the Department of State Expenditure, both for, down-loading financial information and passing on payroll related data.

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS should be enable the means to maintain profiles of all (e.g. medical and paramedical) staff including qualification, expertise and experience details.

2.The payroll calculation process should use a table driven approach, whereby different types of fixed and variable allowances and deductions can be stored against each employee and grade.

3.The system should be fully integrated with the General Ledger system.

4.The NHC/MIS should also generate staffing rosters (e.g. for nurses) with indication of under staffing and over staffing, taking into account absences or unavailability. It should display and list rosters by department and/or ward.

5. The NHC/MIS should readily interface with the computerised systems of other government departments such as the PERSAL of the Department of State Expenditure, both for, down-loading personnel information and passing on payroll related data.

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS should facilitate the performance evaluation of Hospitals and PHC centres, so as to ensure the efficiency of National Health Care services and the optimal use of resources. Such performance evaluation could be based on a Department of Health conceived and designed effective management accounting system to highlight, in tangible terms, the strong and weak points in the functioning of the various facets of the National Health Care services.

2.Thus, the NHC/MIS relevant patient care and administrative modules should be integrated with the General Ledger system which should hold the budgetary details and an analysis of actual expenditure against budgetary figures.

3. The NHC/MIS should also be capable of building a patient's 'Episode Cost Profile' by accumulating cost transactions for the duration of treatment from various NHC/MIS service modules. These transactions should contain details regarding the patient and the episode, the hospital department or PHC centre and the treating doctor and the nature of service. Using the NHC/MIS information the system should arrive at the cumulative cost of a patient's episode and also determine the breakdown of total treatment cost by functional departments, by nature of service and by treating doctors. The NHC/MIS should support user-definable diagnosis related grouping (such as but necessarily DRG) to permit costing of resource usage. It should provide facilities for assignment of DRGs to episodes and to compare actual costs with established standard costs.

4.The system should generate various management reports to help assess the performance of the hospital, department or PHC centre. Some examples of the reports envisaged are:

! Actual vs Budget variance reports

! Actual vs Standard DRG costs

! Cost reports by DRG, Doctor, Functional Department and service

! Patient exception reports where cost/length of stay is in variance with DRG Units.

yes

no

noted

1.The medical modules of the NHC/MIS should assist in quality control of the specialized disciplines and in gathering data for case-mix management. The NHC/MIS should ensure that data is captured only once and at the originating point of care. The data once captured should be shared by all applications anywhere along DoH-NET. The general features of the medical modules should be:

1.1Ease of use since the data is to be entered by the medical staff too.

1.2The system should be designed in such a way that data collection is part of normal work.

1.3 The system should facilitate incorporation of any appropriate coding schemes so that different medical modules may use different coding schemes; and all the coding schemes are then linked to the coding scheme used by the NHC/MIS.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS should allow for routine and ad-hoc extraction of data that could be used for various other purposes such as

! planning,

! programming,

! budgeting,

! monitoring and control,

! evaluation.

yes

no

noted

yes

no

noted

yes

no

noted

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS should be in English.

2. The system must have the ability to create user interfaces in other languages (official South African languages, in Latin Script). This must be costed separately.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS must permit phased implementation, both in one health care institution or across several institutions.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS should enable any of its features to be organized around central databases, e.g. a proposed National Patient Care Data Base. The NHC/MIS must support different levels of access enabling restricted views of the centralised databases(s).

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS should have a "contextual on-line help" facility. By clicking an icon, entering "HELP" or hitting a special function key, the system should provide brief descriptions of the function or entry being performed, and tips on how to proceed. The system must also have an "escape" or escape-like function.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS must have the tools and means to be secure. As a minimum,

1. entry into the NHC/MIS should be password protectable;
2. differing authorization levels could be designated for the performance of any action including combinations of functions such as:

• enter, change and delete data, query and print resulting data;
• only enter data;
• only query; and
• print data.

3. Enable and disable users and workstations from access and use of certain system functions; and
4. Authorization codes should be set up and modified only by the System Administrator, e.g. restrict certain group of users to query only certain field in the patient care data base.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS must have adequate safeguards to maintain confidentiality of the data. In addition to the authorization levels mentioned in para (6.8) above, the system should have the means to optionally encrypt data e.g. for transmission over the Public Data Network.

yes

no

noted

Fast response time to all on-line user requests is essential, even at maximum loading. Any time consuming tasks, activated in an on-line mode, should be flagged on the screen. The bidder must clearly specify its meaning of a "fast response time" and the conditions thereof.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS must have an easy-to-use Report Writer package. All reports should be optionally either produced at a printer or displayed at an on-line workstation, or both.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS must enable user controlled tables (e.g. code and description) to define the various types of data. The user should be enabled to define the size and structure of these codes and to specify whether the entry of these codes is mandatory or not. However, the NHC/MIS should track these user-definable codes so as to guard against any changes or deletions that could lead to inconsistent data.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS must have the means to facilitate data entry by the optional display of the list of codes and descriptions and selection from the list.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS must include a package which exactly mimics the operational system. Such a training package should include a training database which can be (optionally) used in training users without any effect on the operational system. Both the training and operational databases could be in operation at the same time.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS should include a test database to test new applications or changes to the system. Both the test and live databases could be in operation at the same time.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS should provide simultaneous record retrieval access to any number of users, with the necessary record locking. The NHC/MIS should have routines to ensure the integrity of logical transaction units, across distributed databases available anywhere along a network of computing facilities - both local and wide area.

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS must be able to set up a duplicate data base and update it throughout the normal operations of the system. In case of a failure of any of the two databases, the system must be able to continue to operate uninterrupted. Data apart, the NHC/MIS should also recognise duplicates of any of its applications specified by the user as critical.

2.The NHC/MIS should enable recovery of the failed data files to their current status.

3. The NHC/MIS must be capable of doing a midnight backup of all transactions and this would be regarded as the daily backup.

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS should have the facility to tag all or selected transactions with user flags, workstation number and date and time, and to maintain transaction logs.

2. In case of a disaster rendering the operational and duplicate databases unusable, the NHC/MIS should be able to restore a database to its original status by using the last backup and applying the contents of the transaction log files.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS should be fully compliant with the "open systems" standards, and should

1. fully operate on a network,
2. preferably have been developed using a fourth generation applications software development tool, a relational database management system and a Data Dictionary, and
3. have interfaces to popular programming languages
4. have a front-end graphical user interface (GUI) product
5. Support the main EDI formats.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS usage log should contain the time, date, workstation number, user identification with the application(s) accessed and operations performed.

yes

no

noted

1.The NHC/MIS should support automated data capture, wherever feasible, including interfaces to bar-code readers, on-line analyzers, optical character readers and image digitizers/scanners and audio-video, (speech recognition will be a desirable option).

2. This should have ability to create preset input masks that are also modifiable and the ability to create totally new input masks by validation facilities.

3. The NHC/MIS must have the means to facilitate data entry by the optional display of the list of codes and descriptions and selection from the list.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS should interface with other software packages such as those for (a) Electronic Mail, (b) Word Processing, (c) Spreadsheet, and (d) Statistical analysis. This feature should include easy-to-use interfaces to files maintained by the NHC/MIS applications, as well as easy-to-use means for down-loading data from the central database to the relevant packages for further analysis.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS should be menu driven with a flexible and easy to use menu/icon generator.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS should provide the means to instantly provide a hard copy of the information on a workstation screen, without re-generating that information. The NHC/MIS should be accomplished, for example, by hitting a function key or clicking a screen icon..

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS should provide the System Administrator with the tools to customize error and warning messages. Error and warning messages, where feasible, must be reported interactively to enable the user to complete the services effectively and efficiently.

yes

no

noted

The NHC/MIS should include a hard copy (e.g. a reference card) and an electronic form, of the system and user documentation, for each module and for the NHC/MIS as a whole. The detail and quality of this documentation is of major consideration.

Describe and schematically present how the NHC/MIS will be supported on DoH-NET which is hosted over the existing PDN. (A schematic presentation of linkages over DoH-NET is attached as Annexure I).