CAREER Health Services FAQs

ADT    Admission, Discharge and Transfer: The computer application to register, admit and discharge inpatients, to register outpatients and emergency victims and to transfer any patient within the facility by bed and among other health care providers in the community..    

CPI      Central Patient Index: Also known as a master patient index, is the computer application that keeps the person’s unique identification number or code and the person’s demographic data like name, village, tribe etc.  

e-Health: The intent today in all countries is to have a national e-Health implementation, based on extensive computerization of each health care facility and a secure data network to link all health care service providers together. This leads to an EHR (Electronic Health Record), which is a clinical data repository of evidence based, clinically relevant and pertinent patient data, which enables informed treatment of patients at all access points of care and across the continuum of care. 

EHR    Electronic Health Record (EHR): An EHR is the longitudinal health record that provides clinicians access to clinical details captured from one or more encounters in the health sector for each individual person in the country. 

EMR    Electronic Medical Record (EMR): An EMR is a repository of patient health data from a single facility like a hospital or clinic, based on the abstracted medical record coded to international standards. 

EMPI   Electronic Master Patient Index: See the definition of the CPI.  

Health Infostructure: Most countries have a health information management function in their Ministry of Health that sets the health data standards and mandates health statistical reporting from hospitals and clinics, which is in turn is then reported to WHO and/or PAHO. This is referred to as the health infostructure, which in most cases in developing countries is a manual process. 

HL7     Health Level Seven (HL7): HL7 is the accredited international standard developed to cover secure messaging exchange of patient demographics, for  inpatient, outpatient and emergency episode details, patient scheduling, referrals and transfers, radiology/pathology order and results, drug prescribing/dispensing and much more. 

HIS      Health Information System: The Health Metrics Network of the WHO defines a country-wide HIS to include both population-based and institution-based data sources, that are standards-compliant and then integrated into a data repository to support evidence based decision-making, policy development, resource allocation and process improvements. 

HIS      Hospital Information System: An HIS includes more then 20 key application software modules, covering both the financial (accounting, etc.) and clinical management (Patient Registration, etc.) areas of operation. In all developed countries the governments have achieved by and large the implementation of an HIS in every health care facility of the country with the excepting of computerized physician order entry. 

ICT Infrastructure:  Most countries have a wide range of various hardware manufacturers and versions of computers at the desktop and server, storage and network communications levels. The same can be said on both the operating and application software side. This is referred to the ICT infrastructure, which in most cases in developing countries will determine the rate of e-Health deployment and the automation of manual processes. 

LIS      Laboratory Information System: A LIS is typically used in a hospital or by a country/region to record requests, track specimens and report test results on all the various laboratory tests from pathology to blood bank. 

PACS  Picture Achieving and Communication Systems:  A PACS is a digital image repository for radiology examinations for all types of modalities. It should use the DICOM and IHE (Integration Health Enterprise) standards. 

PAS    Patient Administration System (PAS): The first component of an HIS, which is a suite of modules/functions that constitute about 15% of an HIS, including the patient registration for inpatients and outpatients, emergency and surveillance management, patient billing and scheduling. It can be described as the key starting point that can be built upon to achieve both an HIS and the EHR. It also includes the master patient index for unique patient identification and the international coding and abstracting for the EMR. 

PIS      Pharmacy Information System (PIS): A PIS is typically used with hospital or community based pharmacies to register/record prescriptions, dispense drugs, control inventories and provide clinical education (i.e. drug to drug interactions). 

RIS      Radiology Information System (RIS): A RIS is typically used in hospital diagnostic imaging departments to register/record requests, schedule appointments, track and report on the examinations both for film and digital images. 

UPI      Unique Patient Identifier: An number or code that is unique to an individual person.