Utilisation of hospital information systems for medical research in Saudi Arabia: A mixed-method exploration of the views of healthcare and IT professionals involved in hospital database management systems

Development, Status Quo, and Challenges to China's Health Informatization During COVID-19: Evaluation and Recommendations

By applying advanced health information technology to the health care field, health informatization helps optimize health resource allocation, improve health care services, and realize universal health coverage. COVID-19 has tested the status quo of China's health informatization, revealing challenges to the health care system. This viewpoint evaluates the development, status quo, and practice of China's health informatization, especially during COVID-19, and makes recommendations to address the health informatization challenges. We collected, assessed, and evaluated data on the development of China's health informatization from five perspectives-health information infrastructure, information technology (IT) applications, financial and intellectual investment, health resource allocation, and standard system-and discussed the status quo of the internet plus health care service pattern during COVID-19. The main data sources included China's policy documents and national plans on health informatization, commercial and public welfare sources and websites, public reports, institutional reports, and academic papers. In particular, we extracted data from the 2019 National Health Informatization Survey released by the National Health Commission in China. We found that China developed its health information infrastructure and IT applications, made significant financial and intellectual informatization investments, and improved health resource allocations. Tested during COVID-19, China's current health informatization system, especially the internet plus health care system, has played a crucial role in monitoring and controlling the pandemic and allocating medical resources. However, an uneven distribution of health resources and insufficient financial and intellectual investment continue to challenge China's health informatization. China's rapid development of health informatization played a crucial role during COVID-19, providing a reference point for global pandemic prevention and control. To further promote health informatization, China's health informatization needs to strengthen top-level design, increase investment and training, upgrade the health infrastructure and IT applications, and improve internet plus health care services.

GENE2D: A NoSQL Integrated Data Repository of Genetic Disorders Data

There are few sources from which to obtain clinical and genetic data for use in research in Saudi Arabia. Numerous obstacles led to the difficulty of integrating these data from silos and scattered sources to provide standardized access to large data sets for patients with common health conditions. To this end, we sought to contribute to this area and offer a practical and easy-to-implement solution. In this paper, we aim to design and implement a "not only SQL" (NoSQL) based integration framework to generate an Integrated Data Repository of Genetic Disorders Data (GENE2D) to integrate data from various genetic clinics and research centers in Saudi Arabia and provide an easy-to-use query interface for researchers to conduct their studies on large datasets. The major components involved in the GENE2D architecture consists of the data sources, the integrated data repository (IDR) as a central database, and the application interface. The IDR uses a NoSQL document store via MongoDB (an open source document-oriented database program) as a backend database. The application interface called Query Builder provides multiple services for data retrieval from the database using a custom query to answer simple or complex research questions. The GENE2D system demonstrates its potential to help grow and develop a national genetic disorders database in Saudi Arabia.

G3DMS: Design and Implementation of a Data Management System for the Diagnosis of Genetic Disorders

Current health information systems used in genetic research centers and clinics in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have failed to enable researchers and health care physicians to utilize genetic and clinical data in their research. In this paper, we aim to design and implement a Genetic Disorders Diagnosis Data Management System (G3DMS) to support clinicians in the process of diagnosing genetic diseases and conducting genetic studies. A case study was undertaken to analyze a health information system in Saudi to understand its design problems via a brainstorming method. We then used the Barker’s system design method and a prototype to validate our proposed system via usability testing. This research has resulted in the development of the G3DMS that comprises: electronic data-capture forms for data entry; a customized query builder to display and modify patient data as well as form research queries; a module that allows historical data to be uploaded in the form of bulk data using a template; export data options to Excel and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format; and authorization access for healthcare researchers and clinicians. The G3DMS was implemented in the Princess Al-Jawhara Center of Excellence in Research of Hereditary Disorders, Jeddah, KSA.