Abstract—Discharge plan service, which affects patients’
recovery ratio and hospitals’ bed turnover rate is very
significant in hospital revenues in recent years. However, the
effectiveness of discharge plan service has received little
attention. Case managers and clinic specialists in hospitals
require the latest clinical history and reports of patients anytime
and anywhere in order to promote healthcare quality. Therefore,
the shift from health information system (HIS) to mobile medical
service system is an unavoidable trend. This article reports the
implementation of an intelligent Hospital Discharge Plan
Services system, which integrates a smartphone through the
hospital wireless network to store/access clinical data without
time and space limitation. Based on master-slave architecture,
Intelligent Hospital Discharge Plan Services (IHDPS) enables
health professionals to access back-end patients’ clinical data
from the smartphone via an internet connection. IHDPS,
through the provision of sufficient patients’ physical
information from a clinical database, helps case managers can
employ decision tree algorithm to evaluate patients’
comprehensive conditions for adequate discharge arrangement.
The system also reduces the workload of healthcare
professionals, promotes healthcare quality and reduces the
frequency of patients’ in and out of hospital, hence increasing
bed turnover rate.
Index Terms—Hospital discharge plan, organizational
performance, healthcare information system, smartphone.
Liarn Rurng Wen is with the Department of Management Information
Systems, Meiho University, Ping Tung, Taiwan (e-mail:
x00003029@meiho.edu.tw).
Ching Miin Duh is with the Department of Information Management,
National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, Taipei, Taiwan
(e-mail: chingmiin@ntunhs.edu.tw).
Cite: Liarn Rurng Wen and Ching Miin Duh, "Use of a Smartphone to Improve Hospital Discharge Plan Service," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 414-417, 2016.