In the health sector, it is important to consider the
quality of the data. According to WHO,
“Health care data are maintained for the present and future care of the patient
regardless of the level at which the service is provided. The quality of that
data is crucial, not only for use in patient care, but also for monitoring the
performance of the health service and employees. The central theme is that data
quality is proportionate to the attainment of achievable improvements in health
care.”
Data quality includes:
·
accuracy and validity – of the original source
data;
·
reliability – data are consistent and
information generated is understandable;
·
completeness – all required data are present;
·
legibility – data are readable;
·
currency and timeliness – data are recorded at
the time of observation;
·
accessibility – data are available to authorized
persons when and where needed;
·
meaning or usefulness – information is pertinent
and useful; and
·
confidentiality and security – both important
particularly to the patient and in legal matters.
More data coming from different sources makes information
management difficult. How can the health sector manage the increasing volumes
of information but enable its effective processing in support of
decision-making?
On the qualities of good data, I’d like to give emphasis on
the accessibility, meaning or usefulness and confidentiality and security. For
stakeholders, these qualities are very important (though all the qualities are
equally important), I need to be able to easily retrieve (accessibility) the
data and information that I need, that the data I was able to retrieve is
useful for decision-making and the data in that system is confidential and
secured.
In the Philippines; there are many players in the
information systems. Not only on the
sources but the stakeholders that had to be considered and needs for
decision-making should be met. For the
health sector in the Philippines, it is the Department of Health need not only
lead in managing the increasing volumes of information and eventually being able
to use it for decision making.
On an article on website forbes.com titled, Enterprise
Architecture: Don't Be a Fool with a Tool, Vish Viswanathan a TOGAF expert
said “ A fool with a tool is still a fool”. EA efforts are doomed to failure
unless executive management becomes the champion of such initiatives.
The top four
enterprise architecture frameworks compared on the article A Comparison of the
Top Four Enterprise-Architecture Methodologies by Roger Session, I think that
TOGAF fits best the health care situation of the our country. The other three other frameworks could have
been good but the large data for decision making is coming from different
information systems. Based on the article, TOGAF
rated the highest on vendor neutrality compared to the other three.
“TOGAF is not wholly
specific with respect to generated documents; in fact, it provides very little
in the way of prescriptive document templates—merely guidelines for inputs and
outputs”
TOGAF can be adapted to fit any
organizations initiative. According to the Sessions, “TOGAF allows phases to be done incompletely,
skipped, combined, reordered, or reshaped to fit the needs of the situation.
So, it should be no surprise if two different TOGAF-certified consultants end
up using two very different processes—even when working with the same
organization.”
Having a framework
that can conform to different situations is important because change is
inevitable especially that we are dealing with technology and the political
terrain of the country.
Figure 1 TOGAF Architecture Development Method (ADM)
The Architecture Continuum, shows how architectures are
developed from the foundations architectures – which is composed of standards,
which supports the common system architectures, The common system architechture
guides the selection and integration of specific services to create an
architecture useful for building solutions across a wide number of relevant
domains. (eg security architechture, management architecture, network
architecture, etc.) Third, the Industry Architecture guide the integration of
common systems components with industry specific components and guide the
creation of industry solution for targeted customer problems within a particular
industry. Lastly Organization – specific architecture, it describes and guides
the final deployment of solution components for a particular enterprise or
extended network of connected enterprises. Which the solutions continuum
concepts implements the solutions provided by the architecture continuum.
The TOGAF ADM describes the process of developing an
enterprise –specific architecture and an enterprise – specific solution(s)
which conform to that architecture and solutions.
The TOGAF ADM can to conform into the organization’s needs
and vision. According to Sessions, TOGAF views the world of enterprise
architecture as a continuum of architectures, ranging from highly generic to
highly specific. It calls this continuum the Enterprise Continuum.
In article by Sessions comparing the four frameworks through
different criteria. Though, TOGAF did not rate the highest in all the criteria,
it fits best for the Department of Health.
On Taxonomy Completeness, comparing TOGAF to Zachman which ranked
highest, TOGAF process include a method that creates the artifacts, as to
Zachman is the most complete, it is more important that the artifacts are
fitting to the architecture of the enterprise itself.
The process completeness, TOGAF ranked the highest, having a
step by step process is important for creating and developing an EA. Also on
the information availability, having enough resources on using a framework is
very important, though it ranked lowest on the maturity model, having enough
resources can make up for it. According
Jason Bloomberg, TOGAF is perhaps the most popular Enterprise Architecture
(EA) framework today, and its popularity is only increasing. TOGAF’s
popularity, therefore, doesn’t necessarily have much to do with how well it
actually helps organizations achieve success with their EA efforts. “TOGAF is
not a cookbook,” explains Viswanathan. “TOGAF isn’t a cure all for all of
enterprise problems. It’s merely an important link in the EA value chain.” Explains Brown: “If people are struggling
with TOGAF, either they’re not adapting it for their organization.”
The highly adaptability
nature of the TOGAF is suitable for managing the large information coming from
different levels of the health sector.
References:
TOGAF Version 9, The Open Group Architecture (TOGAF) 2009
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2014/08/07/enterprise-architecture-dont-be-a-fool-with-a-tool/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb466232.aspx
No comments:
Post a Comment