A cloud-based model for hospital information systems integration

Integration of hospital information systems (HIS) is an important area and one the basic requirements of hospitals since it increases quality of care and at the same time reduces costs of creating, upgrading, updating and keeping up with technology and healthcare industry standards and information technology. Cloud computing with features like multitenancy, massive scalability, elasticity, pay as you go and self-provisioning resources help healthcare organizations achieve their goals. This paper presents a cloud computing model for integration of hospital information systems which is based on service oriented architecture. Having considered the requirements of HIS integration, the proposed model enables convenient access for all system components including both service provider and organizational components. To ensure security and high level of availability required for medical information, a Backup and Recovery Cloud service is included in our model to provide the users with the ability to retrieve information in critical situations. In addition, a minimum level of local basic services is included in our model that makes possible retrieving information when the hospital faces network disconnection from the cloud. A scenario-based evaluation method is used for assessment of the proposed model which shows adopting cloud computing technology is an effective way for integrating health information systems.