Applied business intelligence in surgery waiting lists management

Abstract

With the advent of computer science in hospitals, Electronic Health Record comes up, with the aim of bringing the new information technologies to the hospital environment with the promise not only to replace the paper process, but also to improve and provide better patient care. The operationalization of the EHR in supporting evidence-based practice, complex and conscientious decision-making, and improving the quality of healthcare delivery has been supported by the Business Intelligence (BI) technology. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the Portuguese health system has been confronted with a chronic problem, waiting time for surgery, due to inability to respond to demand for surgical therapy. Therefore, using business intelligence and information, obtained with the construction of dashboards, can help, for example, allocating hospital resources and reducing waiting times.