Reinstating the Computer Network of the Castle Street Hospital

Background
  
        Being the largest women hospital in the country and a tertiary care center, Castle Street Hospital for Women is a very information sensitive institution in Sri Lankan health sector. It directly contributes to most sensitive health indicators of the country.

In its day to day activities hospital handles various kinds of health data and information such as,

• Individual patient data
• Aggregated patient data
• Data related to drug stores and laboratory
• Human Resource data
• Financial data
• Logistic data

      But currently most of these data are handled manually which in turn consumes a lot of time and even the data that is collected may be of poor quality and lack completeness. Therefore a proposal has been brought forward to streamline the health information flow and to introduce ICT to improve the quality of service in the hospital. For that purpose the hospital needs to have a computer network (LAN) which connects together all the units such as wards, laboratories, stores, administration offices etc. What they expected from us was to take necessary steps to establish such a network.

Our Evaluation

   We first visited the Castle Street Hospital to evaluate their current situation regarding the computer network. After having a discussion with Dr. Praveen De Silva (Medical Officer/ Health Informatics), we learned that they already have a local area network which had been established 7-8 years ago as a result of a government project, but has't been used for a long time. Then we decided to check that network to see whether it can be reinstated instead of establishing a new network from scratch, which would save us both time and money.

     First we checked the network cables and found most of them working properly. But most of the other components such as network switches were not in working conditions. Even the server was inactive and also outdated. Then we had a meeting with Dr. Praveen De Silva and made him aware of our findings. In the discussion we understood that repairing the whole network costs large amount of money. Therefore we decided to establish a basic network including the most important sections of the hospital. The main reason for the decision was that the hospital has already bought Stock Management software and it needed a network connecting those places to work properly.

How we did it

     We decided to establish a primary network connecting the Director’s office, the Accounting Division, the Store room and the Record room. When we checked the network cables of the existing network, we found that the connections to the record room and the store room (located in a separate building) were not working. Since they had been laid underground across a road, we were not in a position to repair. But there was another set of cables which were laid recently to give the internet connection to those places. Since there was no other option, we established a temporary local area network through those cables with the use of two switches and a router and also gave the internet connection through the same network.

Our Team

• Sachith Withana
• Sudheera Palihakkara
• Vidudaya Neranjan Bandara
• Udith Gunaratna
• Dinu Mahakumarage
• Hashini Senaratne
• Maduranga Siriwardena
• Pubudu Gunatilaka
• Damith Senanayake
• Thilina Premasiri
• Tharindu Ranasinghe