Some thought leaders believe that an HMIS implementation cannot be termed successful unless the installed system satisfies the goals initially stated in the pre implementation phase.
Some have also remarked that success of HMIS varies with time and is mostly determined on how well it interacts with third party infrastructure already in place.
While most IT HMIS providers list down arguments on gauging the success of implementation, all agree to this – Implementation would not be successful at all, if it is not divided into phases and proper goals are not assigned to it in each phase. Our implementation team summed up all the phases of implementation for us:
-
Planning
-
System Analysis and Requirement Gathering
-
Configuration which includes system default data configuration as per Hospital needs, migration of master data gathered during the system analysis, requirement gathering phase and Customization
-
User Training, Testing and Trial
-
Master data migration/ entries
-
Parallel Live (for the legacy HMIS using hospitals- this is for integrity checks, reports validation checks and balances)
-
Customization (if any) as per the Parallel Live checks
-
Go-Live
-
Support and Maintenance Phase
Typically planning phase prompts the goal setting. During this both parties mutually decide on the scope of the implementation, put achievable deadline against the goals and plan the entire project. Subsequent phases follow agile development strategy, until the system goes live. Even though the phases listed above vary with technology, it is evident that there are more stories of failure are heard then successes. While there is no perfect recipe for successful implementation, we believe proper planning and careful observation throughout to achieve the goals set initially could spread cheer among both parties.
