7 data sources for health information system

Learn what a health information system is, benefits, best practices, and more in Data Protection 101, our series on the fundamentals of information security.

A health information system (HIS) refers to a system designed to manage healthcare data. This includes systems that collect, store, manage and transmit a patient’s electronic medical record (EMR), a hospital’s operational management or a system supporting healthcare policy decisions.

Health information systems also include those systems that handle data related to the activities of providers and health organizations. As an integrated effort, these may be leveraged to improve patient outcomes, inform research, and influence policy-making and decision-making. Because health information systems commonly access, process, or maintain large volumes of sensitive data, security is a primary concern.

Health information technology (HIT) involves the development of health information systems.

Examples of Health Information Systems

Health information systems can be used by everyone in healthcare from patients to clinicians to public health officials. They collect data and compile it in a way that can be used to make healthcare decisions.

Examples of health information systems include:

Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and Electronic Health Record (EHR)

These two terms are almost used interchangeably. The electronic medical record replaces the paper version of a patient’s medical history. The electronic health record includes more health data, test results, and treatments. It also is designed to share data with other electronic health records so other healthcare providers can access a patient’s healthcare data.

Practice Management Software

Practice management software helps healthcare providers manage daily operations such as scheduling and billing. Healthcare providers, from small practices to hospitals, use practice management systems to automate many of the administrative tasks.

Master Patient Index (MPI)

A master patient index connects separate patient records across databases. The index has a record for each patient that is registered at a healthcare organization and indexes all other records for that patient. MPIs are used to reduce duplicate patient records and inaccurate patient information that can lead to claim denials.

Patient Portals

Patient portals allow patients to access their personal health data such as appointment information, medications and lab results over an internet connection. Some patient portals allow active communication with their physicians, prescription refill requests, and the ability to schedule appointments.

Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM)

Also known as telehealth, remote patient monitoring allows medical sensors to send patient data to healthcare professionals. It frequently monitors blood glucose levels and blood pressure for patients with chronic conditions. The data is used to detect medical events that require intervention and can possibly become part of a larger population health study.

Clinical Decision Support (CDS)

Clinical decision support systems analyze data from various clinical and administrative systems to help healthcare providers make clinical decisions. The data can help prepare diagnoses or predict medical events — such as drug interactions. These tools filter data and information to help clinicians care for individual patients.

Tags:  Data Protection 101 ,  Healthcare

The purpose of this guide is to help health authorities and health information officers align health information system (HIS) data sources with standards and best practices, to ensure that reliable data produce comparable statistics at all levels of the health system.

Download the full guide.

Although standards and best practices are continuously evolving, countries’ ongoing efforts to align data sources will increase the HIS efficiency to monitor population health status and health service delivery, identify health inequalities, and allocate health finances to achieve universal healthcare. Aligning data sources will also improve the quality of national-level indicators used for benchmarking a country relative to others and facilitate participation in global development goals. Perhaps most importantly, HIS stakeholders will have increased confidence in the statistics that the system generates. 

This guide is primarily directed to national health authorities and health information officers in ministries of health. It may also be informative for a wider range of technical and policy-oriented professionals. Each HIS data source module summarizes best practices and standards for data from that source, and offers additional references to tools and resources. The guide can be downloaded in its entirety (here) or by module (below).

The twelve modules, along with a brief explanation of each source, follow:

Zip file containing all of the above modules

For more resources related to strengthening health information systems, visit MEASURE Evaluation's Health Information System Strengthening Resource Center: https://www.measureevaluation.org/his-strengthening-resource-center.

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