Business Architecture of Hospitals - Part 10

Infrastructure is an organizational component that is often taken into account at the tail of projects. Infrastructural solutions require planning and offer the basic support for the rest of the organization.

In hospitals the main infrastructure is physical oriented. The route patients and visitors have to take (part of the logistical process) are long and depend on their treatment. Now, as the organization changes, the physical locations of surgery units, laboratories, care-units and consulting areas change frequently, the paths visitors have to select will also change. This is much like a supermarket where sometimes the fresh fruit products are at the end of the market, and sometimes the organization changes these to the entrance of the market.

In a hospital a change of locations of where the various specialists "operate" has to be signaled to clients. This is to avoid visitors asking: "where do I find the department of ..."

One way of doing this is my setting up navigation which displays where the specialists rooms are to be found. If these change however, all the signs need to be changed too and this requires a lot of work. It is also possible to change the medical name plates to numbers. Now when there are changes in locations only the main navigation "menus" must be updated which is a minor job.

This is all part of infrastructure, and it is only one element; the physical space and the communication. Other elements of infrastructure are: the communication network, the phone infrastructure, the Interactive voice response that is used at the reception and many more...

When organizing infrastructure an organization must think about requirements. These are not functional like those for the radiologist, gynecologist or surgeon, but these requirements are more general and they support the whole hospital organization.

Thinking about these general requirements is thinking about adjectives like: flexibility, security and availability. The above mentioned example of path indicators is a result of a requirement for flexibility. Then what is only missing is to define these requirements and match them to the infrastructural components. Taking in mind that some set of requirements may cause conflicts; more flexibility (mobile internet, mobile communication) may have a negative impact on the overall security.