Building Health Management Information Systems in Egypt - PHRplus

The same three facility management applications being modified and tested by DDM for
the BTS could also serve the needs of the HIS, replacing many forms and providing value to data
providers. The relationship of facility management systems to hierarchical information systems
like the HIS and BTS, and the role of the private sector in providing them is discussed in Chapters
4 and 5.
In addition to the BTS, DDM has developed several other spreadsheet systems. These
include an elaborate system for detailed costing of individual health care facilities, and a system
for analyzing and tracking budgets for Chapter 3 (Bab III) investment projects. These
applications have been developed entirely by DDM staff in the Directorate of Planning. Their
impressive spreadsheet application development skills are largely self-taught, beginning with
reverse engineering the BTS phase one application. Development of these applications in Quattro
Pro is unfortunate. Versions of Microsoft Excel with similar capabilities are now available in
Arabic and dominate the market. Future development work should be done in Microsoft Excel.
3.4 Health Insurance Organization (HIO)
Automation efforts in the Health Insurance Organization have focused on registering and
authorizing beneficiaries and basic facility management systems. Work began with a pilot project
in the late 1980's. The current contracting team, lead by MAXIMUS and including Chemonics
and Arabsoft, began work in 1993. The overall objectives of the effort have been to improve
access to and quality of HIO services, and to reduce their cost.
Software modules developed under the project include the following:
> Beneficiary Registration
> Medical Records
> Admission/Discharge/Transfer
> Periodic Medical Examination
> Cost Accounting
> Drug Control
> Contracted Pharmacy
> Contracted Providers
> Medical Quality Assurance
> Management Reporting
Entities to be automated include pharmacies, polyclinics, hospitals, branch offices, and
HIO headquarters. Much effort has been focused on the problem of beneficiary registration and
authorization. This requires checking the number on a patient's identification card against a
central database. The size of the database, which contains entries for millions beneficiaries, and
the need for polyclinics and hospitals to get a quick answer, presents special problems. The
MAXIMUS team segmented the database among branch offices and implemented on-line queries
through the EGYPTNET X.25 network. If necessary, an additional query is made against a
complete master database at HIO headquarters. Figure 1 illustrates the basic architecture of the
system.
The MAXIMUS team estimated the capacity requirements of the beneficiaries database
and the overall scale of the system and selected Oracle database software as the foundation. With
more than 60 percent of the World database market, and mature multiplatform product, it was a
3.0 Existing Projects 13