A Cloud Computing Solution for Hospital Information System

Chenghao He, Xi Jin, Zhanxiang Zhao, Tian Xiang

Department of Physics
University of Science and Technology of China
Hefei, Anhui Province, China
E-mail: hech@mail.ustc.edu.cn
AbstractExisting Hospital Information System (HIS) is only
shared within separated hospitals or districts, which resulted
in high construction costs and waste of resources, especially for
small township hospitals and other health care systems which
are incapable to set up an independent information platform.
We propose a solution to simplify this construction by using
network module attached to existing systems that are
connected within the hospitals. The proposal is based on the
concepts of cloud computing so the information sharing and
high-end processing is available in the "cloud". Furthermore,
existing medical equipments can be rebuilt to be more efcient
and low-cost as medical terminal units.
Keywords-cloud computing;hospital information system
1. INTRODUCTION
Hospital Information System(HIS) refers to the computer
system which is applied in medical information management
and online operations. It covers all the hospital services and
business[1,2]. General HIS also concludes Laboratory
Information System(LIS), Radiology Inforation System
(RIS), Ultrasound Information System(UIS) etc. The
standard HIS framework based on DICOM protocol is as
Fig. 1.
HIS construction in China relates to various aspects of
hospital affairs like digital acquisition, storage, management
and transport of medical inforation. So far, the Computer
based Patient Records(CPR), Picture Archiving and
Communication System(PACS) and other advanced
technologies have been widely adopted[3,4]' However, we
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978-1-4244-6585-9/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE
517
should also realize that the late start, weakness of technology
and lack of fnds make the HIS not as successful as in other
industries. Especially in township hospital, there have more
problems[ 5].
In order to reduce the diffculty of HIS construction and
maintenance, information sharing is realized to be important.
In the framework of Fig. 1, there is interface for connecting
interet. But as lack of proper technology to realize an
effective and safe connection, hospitals have been
established HIS system independently. Except the high-cost
of construction and management, it cannot supply
satisfactory inforation sharing. Though there is province
begins to establish a unifor medical archives[6], but it's
still hard to expand and unable to solve the repeat
construction. All these problems are expecting to be worked
out, which relies on innovation and improvement of the
overall structure of HIS.
II. MOTIVATION
Traditional HIS construction serves to independent
hospitals, so from the frst HELP system at LDS Hospital [7],
to recent HIS in Peking University ShenZhen Hospital [8],
the following questions are hard to avoid.
A. Problems of Traditional HIS
1) Lack of uniorm standards for data-sharing
HIS is realized and widely applied based on Computer
based Patient Records(CPR); but before carrying out CPR
system, it is most important to work out the problem such as
the data storage and transmission standards. Unifed forat
and content of data storage are the basis for communication
between systems. Since the patients would not seek
treatment in a fxed hospital, and in the present case of
hospitals with independent inforation systems, it can cause
information non-recognition and incompatibility between
inforation systems during the referal process of the CPR.
At the same time, within hospital there are a large
number of medical equipment such as ultrasound, CT,
radiology equipment, monitoring equipment, anesthesia
equipment etc., producing a large number of data of different
storage forms and encoding methods. Information
classifcation and data standards are not of strictly unifor.
Although there are interfaces among different systems, it is
very difcult to realize the integration between various
subsystems. Therefore it directly causes the inforation
unable to be shared effectively among different hospitals,
even between different departments in the same hospital,
thus resulting in duplication and waste of resources.
2) High cost for independent constrction
It costs much for any hospital to set up a complete
platform combining all aspects such as hardware, software,
management, maintenance, for the existing HIS construction.
Township hospitals in particular, are neither possible n

r
necessary to establish a set of independent system, but It
bears the important burden to provide medical services to
rural residents.
Even for medium and large hospitals, the independent
construction of HIS is a heavy burden, such as the
construction for Picture Archiving and Communication
System (P ACS). From the short term, P ACS framework
could not save medical costs but increase the burden of
hospital expenditures. Thus the hospitals with not abundant
capital prefer to continue using flm and paper materials to
record the clinic information.
3) Difcult to Management, Upgrades and Maintenance
Separate HIS requires separate management and
maintenance for hospitals. With the problems arising during
operation, such as technical shortage, incorrect use of
software, or lack of experts, the management and
maintenance of HIS requires continuous investment, which
is a great cost to hospitals.
Besides, different scale or specialized hospitals produce
kinds of individual needs for HIS. The request for upgrade
also comes up in usage. But independent HIS requires the
maintenance and upgrade separately to progress in each
hospital, thus a lot of HIS can not get proper technical
services[9].
B. Related Works
To solve these problems, the key is to realize sharing of
sofware, hardware and medical data. There is some related
works that envision similar solutions.

The work in [6] introduces that Fujian province has

started to establish a unifed medical archive by the
Department of Health. It is estimated to cover many
hospitals to achieve their CPR, prescriptions,
medical advices, inspection fndings and other
information sharing.

The work in [10] proposes a HIS constructed on the

technology and method of XML application. It can
realize integration and sharing of information
between hospitals and other departments.
But based on the traditional database technology, it's
hard to expand with above frameworks. Also the
maintenance and management is unsatisfactory. A suitable
framework needs to be found. Cloud computing is a new
network application model. And it has spacious room for
development in hospital inforation areas for its fexible and
extensible.
III. CLOUD COMPUTING
A. Development
Proposed in recent years, cloud computing is an
innovative model of network and being promoted by
518
Figure 2. Te cloud
Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsof, Yahoo and other large
companies. Narrow cloud computing is the delivery and
usage patter of IT infrastructure, to demand the resources
with expanded necessaries and facilities by network. A
broader sense of cloud computing extend this network model
to any service[1l-14].
Google is now the largest user of cloud computing with
its search engine built on more than one million servers in
the distribution of more than 200 locations; Amazon's Elastic
Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3)
provide services mainly for enterprises; IBM's "Blue Clo

d"
computing platform, provides an open cloud computmg
system for customers with buy-to-use cloud platfor;
.
at the
same time, including Microsof, many large companIes are
actively expanding the feld of cloud computing.
B. Cloud in Medical Afairs
Cloud computing model provides a new way to solve
foregoing problems. Some studies have been performed
recently in an attempt to employ Cloud method in medical
affairs.

The work in [15] presents the issues MIA (Medical

Imaging Analysis) researchers and clinicians deal
with and proposed a new famework based on cloud
computing concept for cancer imaging research.
Though it's not exactly focus on hospital affairs, the
difculties in processing medical information and
potentials of cloud computing are analyzed in detail.

Moreover, the work in [16] proposes cloud method

to patient's data gathering. It can automate the
process from bedside data collection to information
distribution and remote access by medical staff This
work shows how cloud computing works in hospital
affairs and suggests frther development in HIS.
IV. PROPOSAL
Our proposal is a system to share the information of
different hospitals via virtual private network (VPN) and
public Interet access. Fig.3 is the proposed construction of
cloud-based HIS. The health department establishes the
private cloud to store and manage important information
such as computer-based patient records, etc. While other data
of noral management and business can be put into
commercial cloud server.
Small Hospital
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Figure 3. Construction of cloud-based HIS
This framework is easy to realize by adding a network
module or control center just attached to existing systems.
The network module is to connect within the cloud, and can
use the resources in cloud to achieve hardware, software and
data-storage according to the need. Using this method to
optimize and reduce existing HIS gradually, thus obtains
adjustable fexible structure.
It's very afordable to use cloud computing in medical IT
services, many hospitals can share the infrastructure formed
by connecting large number of systems together, thus the
hospitals can become more effcient, and construction costs
can be reduced. At small hospitals like township hospitals,
most business can be processed within the cloud, so as to get
rid of the heavy burden of complete construction and
management. They only need to complete the patients'
information collection and result display, the others that
including management, storage, maintenance, and even
disease diagnosis can be achieved in the central servers. Also
large hospitals reduce its costs from this fexible and
extensible framework.
There are several practical advantages in this
implementation, such as:

Reduce the costs: Using cloud computing

technology, hospitals can get the services provided
by millions of servers in the cloud but pay a little,
then higher efciency, lower cost can be achieved.
Compared with spending lots of money to buy a
dedicated server, using cloud services is clearly more
cost-effective.

Flexible and extensible framework: The cloud

framework supports heterogeneous equipments and
alterable system scale. Small hospitals can frst set
up a simple system with necessary component. As
the hospital becomes bigger and bigger, it can easily
scale up the cloud in a short time[17].

Better information sharing: Through the cloud model,

the health and medical institutions can work together
to build information-sharing space of medical
519
resources. This can share infastructure without
having to update the related hardware, reduce costs
while efciency is greatly enhanced.

Reduce maintenance expenses: The user terminal

architecture is unlimited in cloud computing model,
therefore, the technical staffs do not have to pay
much attention to upgrading the hospital hardware,
while the daily maintenance of the server is also
provided by the cloud service provider, and thus they
have more time to undertake other work .

Reliable operation of the server: The data of hospital

daily business are concentrated in the server in the
present hospital inforation systems, so the hospital
cannot work norally once a server failure occurs;
seriously key data will be lost in extreme cases. The
cloud computing model can quickly copy data in the
failed server to another server, and start the new
server to provide services, that obtains real
continuous security services.

Further application prospects: Meanwhile, in the

cloud computing model, experienced major hospital
doctors can help diagnose patients of rural hospitals
directly by collected patients' condition, images and
other data, because of the unifed data storage and
sharing, we can even implement electronic disease
diagnosis based on powerful cloud computing[6].
V. CLOUD-BASED MEDICAL DEVICES DESIGN
To set up a cloud-based terminal hospital system, besides
applying existing system to upgrade, the best approach is to
develop new medical equipment, including image acquisition
equipment, monitoring equipment, management equipment,
etc. As only to complete terminal mission, other tasks
including video processing, data storage, etc. can be placed
in the cloud, it greatly reduces the equipment cost and
maintenance difculties. The following will make briefy
introduction on the cloud-based image acquisition devices.
Medical image is an important means of clinical
diagnosis and medical science, also applied for the Picture
Archiving and Communication System (P ACS). Medical
image acquisition devices are mainly including X-ray,
magnetic resonance, ultrasound, CT, which are in different
physical principles to realize the imaging methods for non
intervention of the human interal organs, tissues, blood and
others.
Traditional digital image data acquisition device should
not only complete digital image formation and acquisition,
but also image processing and data storage. A number of
high-end applications, such as three-dimensional ultrasound
imaging, speckle noise attenuation are achieved through
equipment upgrades. However, with the cloud model, the
device can be simplifed accordingly, so that it just requests
to complete the front end of data collection and video images
formation, then by a compatible data forat of standard
DICOM, and through the network module directly to the
central servers of cloud; then receiving the processed real
time image and display. FigA shows the basic block diagram
of cloud-based medical image acquisition equipment.
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Figure 4. Block diagram of cloud-based medical image acquisition
equipment
VI. CONCLUSION
This article describes the HIS based on cloud computing
which realizes the fexible, extensible and practicable
framework by regarding all the hardware, sofware and data
of hospitals as resources acquirable from the cloud. It has not
only signifcantly reduces the construction cost and provides
wide medical application for village and town hospitals, but
can realize the information sharing and effective use of
resources to the greatest extent. Meanwhile, it reduces
hospital operating costs and signifcantly improves operating
efciency. The infastructure of "cloud" contributes to help
hospitals save the time and efforts required for IT systems.
Moreover, we suggest further applications of this
architecture such as the construction of Health Information
System. And based on the new platform and depending on
powerfl servers, it can be realized of the medical images to
be automated diagnosed. Besides, cloud Infastructure not
only makes updating and application of new technologies
simpler, but also can be the unifed base for hospital system
construction.
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