Systems development life cycle (SDLC) best practices

Most healthcare providers are now using computerization to share patient data and information across facilities locally, nationally, and eventually, internationally. This week we will be discussing personal experiences with health information systems and more specifically electronic health records. Answer the following questions, being sure to appropriately support your statements with at least 2 scholarly sources (peer-reviewed, less than 5 years old).

1. In your current or former workplace, what type of clinical applications were utilized? (I work in a hospital)

2. Do you believe your workplace followed systems development life cycle (SDLC) best practices? If so, how? If not, why do you believe the organization failed to do so?

3. How can organizations balance federal requirements and timelines with best practices for SDLC?

3. What metrics (if any) should organizations consider determining whether care is positively or negatively influenced by electronic health record adoption and implementation driven by the HITECH Act?

Requirements: As instructed

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument