Table of Contents
Section 1: Executive Summary: 2
Section 2: Organizational Profile: 2
Section 3: Strategies: 3
Section 4: Technology Involved: 3
Section 5: Analysis of Existing System: 5
Section 6: Problem.. 7
Section 7: Suggested solution: 7
Section 8: Conclusion: 8
Section 9: References: 8
Section 1: Executive Summary:
NGHA (National Guard Health Affairs) is well-known group of hospitals in Saudi Arabia (Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, Madinah, and Alahsa) owned by the Ministry of National Guard. (Official NGHA Website, 2020)
In this report we will investigate on different IT (information technology) and IS (information system) infrastructure used by this organization. The study will focus on their hardware, software, services, data management, and networking.
These systems make a radical change in their existing business process as well as improving patient experience and provide the best quality of healthcare.
Section 2: Organizational Profile:
NGHAs first hospital was established in May 1983 Riyadh and continues to expand around the kingdom. The organization provides the best healthcare to national guard personnel, their dependents and other eligible patients (NGHA Medical Cities, 2020).
NGHA has achieved many accreditations such as Joint Commission International (JCI) since 2006, The Saudi Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institute (CBAHI) since 2018, and so much more will be discussed on upcoming parts (Dr. Bandar Al Knawy, 2017).
NGHA also established College of Medicine and the College of Nursing and Allied Medical Sciences which adds a value to the organization by providing an opportunity to students do their academic research on medical science (NGHA Medical Cities, 2020).
Mission:
Providing best quality healthcare to Saudi Arabian National Guard personnel, their dependents and other eligible patients. It also provides excellent academic opportunities, conduct research and participate in industry and community service in health field. (NGHA Medical Cities, 2020).
Vision:
NGHA will be recognized as internationally acclaimed center of excellence to enhance individual and public health status. (NGHA Medical Cities, 2020).
Organizational Structure:
NGHA is following functional organizational structure which groups individuals by specific functions to be performed. The below chart shows NGHA top level management structure (Saad Al Dulaijan, personal communication, 2020).
Section 3: Strategies:
In healthcare field, healthcare providers seek to provide the best quality of healthcare in terms of bed capacity, number of facilities, patient safety and satisfaction, and so much more factors. NGHA is one of the leader driven success in this field as it has gained a competitive advantage among other healthcare providers (Dr. Bandar Al Knawy, 2017).
NGHA medical facility report shows that the total number of outpatient visit reached to 3,217,873 visits. and inpatient admission reached to 126,749. Also, bed capacity reached to 3,485 which is the highest number in Saudi Arabia (Dr. Bandar Al Knawy, 2017).
Meanwhile, NGHA continues expanding in its facilities by establishing medical centers that serve the small cities (Dr. Walid Al Yafi, 2019)
In my opinion, I suggest NGHA to invest its capabilities to acquisition of other medical facilities to improve its performance and increase the number of bed capacity effectively.
Section 4: Technology Involved:
Speaking of NGHA IT infrastructure, we found difficulties getting some of this information from outside the organization, so we have interviewed on of the employee (in-person communication) to give us a clear overview about their infrastructure. We came up with the following study:
Network Infrastructure:
NGHA data center is a centralized infrastructure network based on Riyadh and connects to different branches using STC cloud network. The main servers and database are all in Riyadh data center (Saad Al Dulaijan, personal communication, 2020). We have drawn this diagram to show different network nodes:
As shown in the diagram the main systems we have chosen to discuss in the upcoming part in our report.
Hardware and Software:
NGHA have their standards in hardware as they are using HP and Huawei servers. Also, for client-side PCs they are using HP for both desktops and laptops.
In software mainly they are using Microsoft Windows operating system for clients PC. Also, a Windows Server as well as Linux Apache (Saad Al Dulaijan, personal communication, 2020).
Telecommunications:
For telecommunication, NGHA uses Cisco Telephony System which is consist of many subsystems. All these subsystems are centralized on main data center in Riyadh (Saad Al Dulaijan, personal communication, 2020).
Information Security:
NGHA uses Cisco firewall and P5 VPN software for security. Also, they have invested a lot of money to enhance their cybersecurity department and their functions (Saad Al Dulaijan, personal communication, 2020).
Section 5: Analysis of Existing System:
Enterprise Correspondence Tracking and Archiving Solution:
NGHA is using E-CTS (Enterprise Correspondence Tracking and Archiving Solution) as one of their information systems. ECTS is used to exchange all official memorandums, confidential documents, and important documents as well among employees and decision makers. E-CTS provided by EverSuite, is an electronic document management system allows users to automatically file, manage and share content within a single document repository. (EverSuite Content Management System)
NGHA selected this solution to help completing the transactions in a timely manner, preventing document loss as well as providing an archiving system for easy handling and retrieval in time of need. In addition, provide a paperless environment, improving productivity, security and information tracking of almost all correspondence at lower cost and minimum effort. (NGHA Enterprise Correspondence Tracking and Archiving Solution – News).
For instance, if a manager wants to request for a new service from another department, he prepares a memorandum and send it to the concerned person, the concerned person receives that memo and can respond, forward, or close it depends on the situation of the request. This workflow is managed by ECTS for documentation purposes. Later, when a decision maker wants a detailed report about a specific departments function, he can easily find using ECTS which archive those documents as different categories based on text-recognition (AI capability).
This system helps top management to analyze and decide whether to automate high-demand requests or not.
Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning:
Another information system is Oracle (Enterprise Resource Planning system) used to manage all transactions in NGHA. Oracle contains all sensitive information such as employees information, assets and all other transactions.
Oracle Enterprise resource planning refers to a type of software that organizations use to manage day-to-day business activities such as accounting, procurement, project management, risk management and compliance, and supply chain operations. ERP tie together a multitude of business processes and enable the flow of data between them. By collecting an organizations share transactional data from multiple sources. It is used to eliminate data duplication and provide data integrity with a single source of truth. (Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning Official website).
ManageEngine Service Desk:
NGHA is also using ManageEngine system (ticketing system) for IT services, hardware and software assets, operating system patches management and control. ManageEngine is the main channel between employee and IT support. ManageEngine is a comprehensive IT helpdesk software that combines asset management and helpdesk functionalities in a single platform. It is designed to help users get complete visibility of IT issues in their workplace and manage them accordingly in the most efficient manner possible. From ticket management and data archiving to asset tracking and license management.
employee should create a service request through ManageEngine to get a service from IT department. Some services require approval because there is a charge on requester department, and here is a problem in NGHA, we will be discussing it in the problem section. (NGHA ManageEngine Brochure).
Hospital Information System (Best Care):
The need of NGHA to handle patient information was a challenge, so they have implemented Best Care system that aims to contain the patients medical history through an electronic medical records that starts from birth, in addition to patient interactive self-services, which also provides a package of services after personal verification by either fingerprint, smart card or the medical record number.
Best Care distinguished by its usability and functionality in covering all health centers requirements featuring in unified database, smart phones application, e-consent, in addition to improving communication between doctors and patients and providing educational tools for physicians, trainees and patients. Most importantly, Best Care promotes a smart hospital approach by electronically exchanging the clinical documents, electronic services to the decision makers of health care providers towards patient centered care (NGHA BESTCare Hospital Health Information System Official Website).
Cisco Telephony System:
VoIP (voice over IP), is a networking protocol used in telephony system to initiate a call between two parties. Cisco Unified Communication System is one of the best solutions that NGHA has selected to manage, operate their telephony communications. This is a critical system on NGHA since most of operation and medical exchange is done though calls. Cisco telephony system has many parts comes as a bundle such as:
1. Cisco Unified Call Manager:
Is an IP-based communications system integrating voice, video, data and mobility products and applications. It enables more effective, secure communications and can transform the way in which we communicate. This is used by NGHA Communications technical team to manage their telephones and extension lines by adding, deleting, modifying them. (Cisco Unified Call Manager – Cisco Website).
2. Cisco Unified Contact Center Express:
Is a contact center in a box that provides a secure and easy to deploy customer interaction management solution, it is also an IP-based automated call distribution system that queues and distributes incoming calls destined for groups of users. It provides multimedia (voice, data, and web) customer care application environment that enhances the efficiency of contact centers by simplifying business integration, easing agent administration and increasing agent flexibility. (Cisco Unified Contact Center Express- Cisco Website).
3. Cisco Webex:
Is an IP-based collaboration solution used by end users to communicate through their devices such as laptops, mobile phones. Cisco Webex allows users to share content, share screen and creating a project team. This system has been utilized by NGHA especially on COVID-19 pandemic since most of employees were working from home.
Also, from medical perspective, NGHA has utilized this system as a solution for newborn ladies who wants to be seen by their families due to COVID-19 quarantine. This was an innovative solution by NGHA technical team. (Cisco Webex – Cisco Official Website)
Virtual Clinic:
This solution aims to improve and develop the Centers services as in providing medical & health services without requiring the patients to attend clinics. This was implemented due to COVID-19 pandemic in Madinah only and was successfully utilized by medical staff and patients. (NGHA Virtual Clinic NGHA Website).
Section 6: Problem
The problem is that there is a conflict in storing the information (duplication) on ManageEngine, Oracle, and ECTS systems. Let us take a simple scenario to understand it:
Dr. Ahmed wants to request a new laptop to finish his work at home. Ahmed should go through these steps:
1. Ahmed should create a memorandum signed by his manager and posted through ECTS directed to IT support.
2. Ahmed should create a service request through ManageEngine system describing his request, memorandum should be attached.
3. IT support should escalate the memorandum to IT manager to get the approval on ECTS.
4. After the ECTS request has been approved by IT manager, memo is escalated back to IT support.
5. When IT support receives the approved memo, he can proceed with ManageEngine request.
6. IT support created Oracle request to vendor to purchase the laptop.
7. Oracle request is escalated to purchasing department to proceed the purchase.
8. After Oracle request is processed, vendor delivers the laptop to IT support.
9. IT support manually enters the asset information on Oracle.
10. IT support manually enters the asset information again on ManageEngine.
11. IT support prepare and deliver the laptop to Ahmed.
12. IT support resolves the ManageEngine request, and mark the memo as done with a ManageEngine request reference.
13. Request is completed.
In this scenario, we have noticed that a duplication of data on ECTS, ManageEngine, and Oracle as well as workflow is not properly set. This process can be improved and enhanced through the integration of the three systems and re-engineering the whole workflow (Saad Al Dulaijan, personal communication, 2020).
Section 7: Suggested solution:
Our suggested solution is to integrate those three systems and enhance the workflow as follows:
1. Requestor should create one request only to IT through ManageEngine.
2. ManageEngine request should be redirected to concerned person automatically, as well as approvals.
3. There is no need to create a memorandum since the ManageEngine request is approved by your manager and IT manager.
4. Purchase request is done automatically after ManageEngine request satisfies all conditions such as approvals, department budget availability.
5. Purchasing department should not be involved at all, system should do their job automatically.
6. Assets should be extracted from vendor delivery note to be saved on both Oracle and ManageEngine.
Section 8: Conclusion:
NGHA is one of the most well-known organizations in Saudi Arabia in health sector, which continues expanding all over the country.
To summarize this report, we have given an introduction of NGHA, their business profile and strategies. Also, we have covered some of NGHA technologies such as ECTS, ManageEngine, Oracle, Best Care, Cisco Telephony System, and Virtual Clinic system. In the last section we have analyzed an information system problem that NGHA has which is a duplication of data and proposed a solution for which is an integration of three systems.
Our resources were very helpful and intensive research has been done by Amani, Eiman, and Afnan. In addition, special thanks to our leader Amani who did an interview with one of NGHA employee, and to our instructor who inspire us with the guidance to complete this report.
Section 9: References:
1. Official NGHA website
https://ngha.med.sa/English/Pages/default.aspx
2. Dr. Bandar Al Knawy Chief Executive Officer, Ministry of National Guard Health Affairs & President, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Science(2017) official report https://ngha.med.sa/English/AboutNGHA/Pages/profile.aspx
3. NGHA Medical Cities https://ngha.med.sa/English/MedicalCities/AlRiyadh/Pages/default.aspx
4. Dr. Walid Al Yafi (Sep 2019) NGHA media center https://ngha.med.sa/English/MediaCenter/News/Pages/MMXIXSepXVI.aspx
5. Saad Al Dulaijan Contributor (October 2020) personal communication interview.
6. EverSuit Content Management system
https://www.cmswire.com/d/eversuite-content-management-p000295.
7. NGHA Enterprise Correspondence Tracking and Archiving solution
https://ngha.med.sa/English/MediaCenter/News/Pages/XVJulXXVI.aspx.
8. Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning Official Website
https://www.oracle.com/sa/erp/what-is-erp/
9. NGHA ManageEngine Brochure
https://www.ngha.med.sa/English/eServices/Documents/MNGHA_Unified_ISID_Helpdesk_System_Full_Brochure_2.pdf
10. NGHA BESTCare hospital health information system official website
https://ngha.med.sa/English/AboutNGHA/bestcare/Pages/Default.aspx.
11. Cisco Unified Call Manager Official Website
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/unified-communications/unified-communications-manager-callmanager/index.html
12. Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Cisco Website
https://developer.cisco.com/docs/contact-center-express/#!uccx-overview/what-is-unified-contact-center-express
13. Cisco Webex Cisco Official Website
https://www.webex.com/what-is-video-conferencing
14. NGHA Virtual Clinic NGHA Official Website
https://ngha.med.sa/English/MediaCenter/News/Pages/MMXIXSepXVI.aspx