Decision Support System (DSS) Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Decision Support System (DSS) - Research Paper Example Data on an organization's external operating environment, as well as internal operational information, is included and an interactive interface allows managers to retrieve and manipulate data. Modeling techniques are used to examine the results of alternative courses of action† (Decision support system.2007). Later on, DSS contributed to several domains, one of them is the healthcare sector. The Armed Forces Longitudinal Technology Application (AHLTA) is an internationally recognized medical and dental information management system that provides a safe and secure online accessibility to the military health systems (MHS) reports of beneficiary. Medical clinicians, who are deployed in various medical treatment facilities worldwide, access the system (DHIMS, 2011). They are provisioned with complete and appropriate health data in order to take informed decisions regardless of location and time. Moreover, AHLTA also facilitates central storage of electronic health records (EHR) dat a used to retrieve patients overall history of injuries and diseases (DHIMS, 2011). AHLTA Functionality The information flow and sharing of information on various levels of the AHLTA system are illustrated below (How data travels through AHLTA, n.d): The flow of information does not cover all aspects of the system and only prioritize on nontechnical aspects. As there are four primary components of the system including: Client Workstations: The workstations that will be used by the clinical staff Local Cache Database: The local cache database stores all the retrieved information, in order to provide information much faster as compared to a normal request of patient information from the system. Clinical Data Repository: The clinical data repository hosts the primary database and includes all the patient and clinical data connected to all the military treatment facilities worldwide. CHCS: Composite Health Care System is a legacy system that is performing the task of maintaining informa tion and information retrieval related to results, appointments and vice versa. Moreover, the AHLTA system operates on two modes i.e. the normal mode and the Failover mode. The normal mode provides provision of all the available information related to patient’s history. The CHCS retrieves and demonstrates demographics, appointment information and results from the clinical data repository that displays all the information to the computer of the client (How data travels through AHLTA, n.d). The fail over mode also operates on the same four components excluding the clinical database repository. In this scenario, the clinical team can have access to document encounters related to patients. Nevertheless, they cannot access the complete record of the patients and historical records i.e. they cannot access CDR. If CDR is not accessible, CHCS sends all the information related to patient appointments, demographics along with all the relevant information to local database cache (LDC) ( How data travels through AHLTA, n.d). Furthermore, the fail over mode supports: Scheduling of appointment information Last four encounters of scheduling patients Information related to patient and family history for patients that are scheduled Inventory information related to stores User Configuration The client server architecture of an AHLTA system were illustrated by â€Å"