The Relationship Between Fujitsu And Hpsc

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction

Outsourcing is an increasingly important initiative being pursued by organizations to improve efficiency. To be able to survive and be profitable in current globalization era, companies tend to use outsourcing in larger extent. In today’s business environment, companies considered outsourcing to empower business focus, minimize risks, create a maintainable competitive advantage, and extend technical capabilities with free resources for the essential business purposes. This paper examines the issue of information systems (IS) outsourcing through the framework of case study based. It analyses the impact of which outsourcing (in this case information systems) has had on the organization being discussed and the state at which the outsourcing has left the organization and outsourcer. It also covers the benefits, if there are any which were realized as a result of the outsourcing.

A Description of the organization

Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) is Ireland’s leading specialist Centre for surveillance of communicable diseases. It was set up in 1998 conjointly by Ireland’s eight Health Boards and with the approval of the Minister for Health and Children.

The main aim of the organization is to improve the health of the Irish population by the collecting, interpretation and providing the best and most accurate information on infectious diseases. This is achieved by providing advice, monitoring, studying the patterns of diseases, research and training people in controlling them.

HPSC works in cooperation with health service providers and sibling organizations in other countries to ensure that information is up to date and available in order to aid to the effective control of infectious diseases. It strives at improving and protecting the health of the Irish population by providing timely information about infectious diseases.

Disease surveillance is basically the gathering of various data and information regarding information to those who need to know. The information collected is then used in a different number of ways like:

Assessing and appraising the effectiveness of control, as well as current preventative health measures

Monitoring several changes in infectious agents, for instance, the common antimicrobial resistance trends in development.

Supporting health planning and the allocation of the right resources within the healthcare system etc.

HPSC mainly responsible for the following areas:

Carrying out reconnaissance on some of the main communicable diseases.

Operational support – giving professional advice, and responding to call/plea for support from, departments of public health and hospitals

Training of the experts who are responsible for controlling communicable disease.

Policy advice – advising different government departments and other important agencies about coming up with standards, guidelines and practices. And advising the agencies when it comes to adopting those practices.

Summary of the case study

The case study is about the Computerized Infectious Disease Reporting (CIDR) system which was outsourced to fujitsu after winning the tender which was put up by HPSC for the design and development of a centralized and consolidated system to manage the different notification streams of infectious diseases in Ireland. The result of which was CIDR.

Prior to the formation/development of HPSC and CIDR, the disease notification system was paper based which lacked in both the quality and speed at which the information was being delivered. In some cases there would be two or more notifications about one case which showed up on different databases, of which not exactly line or produced unreliable statistics. After HPSC was, they sought of better ways and means to properly collecting the information in a timely and efficient manner preferably electronic, which in inevitably led to the requirements realization of system now known as CIDR.

Apart from managing the surveillance and controlling infectious disease, fujitsu also designed CIDR to monitor the ability of organisms to resist antibiotic drugs. CIDR’s design was centered on "security, flexibility, and the provision of an enterprise-wide reporting capability"

In order to achieve total security in the circulation of confidential medical data, Fujitsu utilized a two-factor authentication method in order to extend the basic authentication. It uses RSA ACEServer and SecurID tokens integrated with Microsoft Active Directory over SSL encrypted communications. And implement the Flexibility aspect of the system, which is needed in order to meet changing needs. Fujitsu developed a Service-Orientated Architecture (SOA) with business objects and web services directly in Visual Basic .NET using XML communications.

Since CIDR is a reporting tool used by 300 recipients, Fujitsu also implemented a business intelligence platform widely used to run 100’s of template reports and supports the creation of sophisticated ad hoc reporting.

Critical Analysis

Outsourcing of the CIDR system has helped HPSC in a number of ways. First of which is that it helped to raise and enhance the organizations profile with the quality of data that is produced, management and the rapid rate of response that CIDR provides. Not forgetting the security levels that the system provides to ensure that sensitive confidential medical information is transferred safely without being altered or misused, to which most health professionals have praised. The system helped HPSC to properly manage Avian Flu outbreak and Swine Flu pandemic. To which john brazil added "Fujitsu has done an excellent job of designing, developing and implementing our computerized infectious disease surveillance Centre. Its functionality has met our needs and this was underscored by our positive experiences during the recent flu pandemic" (Fujitsu, 2010)

Another thing is that after the system was implemented HPSC is now able to effectively gain a true picture of the situation at hand; this is due to the fact that CIDR has replaced a lot of separate disease databases, not just regionally but nationally as well. This meant that regardless of where you are, you will still get the same exact and precise information making it easy for people to work in different areas independent of their geography. Due to the fact that the data is centralized, as it was stated by john brazil "It consolidates disparate information streams that had been implemented over the previous five years as interim measures" (Fujitsu, 2010). And with that HPSC is in turn able to properly provide more relevant and precise information to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. This also possible due to the

Also with the use of CIDR the organization is able to detect serious health threats and patterns more quickly, making it easier for the authorities to deal with infectious diseases, this is due to the fact that the system is able to provide notifications of outbreaks in advance, which means that cases are picked up early on thus enabling them to be treated before getting worse and becoming a pandemic.

Prior to CIDR’s implementation it was hard to get accurate and timely disease notification to the point that people failed to see the point of having such kind of a system when it fails to perform to expected standards. As stated by john brazil and I quote "Previously statistics were being collected and there was no information circle so the quality and timeliness of information was not good and people did not see the purpose and advantage of it. Now, CIDR gives more timely and accurate views of the amount of notifiable infectious diseases that are around and about in the country" (Fujitsu, 2010). So it is safe to say that the outsourcing and implementation of the information system CIDR has quite significantly helped HPSC to realize its intended value. And also the system made HPSC to become a trusted source of disease information to the point that most health professionals has praised accuracy, speed, but most of all the security that the system provides when it comes to alerting and the circulation of information.

The relationship between fujitsu and HPSC has always been great, even from the beginning there was always a trusting and cooperative working environment from both sides, which made the development of infectious disease notification system to progress at fast and timely pace with a seamless transition from the old, un accurate and very rigid paper based system. So even after the implementation of CIDR, Fujitsu and HPSC still continue their long and trusted association/relationship.

The two organization still work together to make sure that CIDR is up to date and able to provide the best functionality when it comes to giving timely, accurate notification with great quality and reporting facilities. To date Fujitsu has recently completed a technology refresh of the CIDR system. The refresh mainly involved bringing in new hardware which will be able to properly process all the capabilities and functionality of the system in order to meet the ever growing need and demand of the system. Apart from bringing in new hardware Fujitsu also migrated from the old operating system that was previously being used when CIDR was first implemented to a new operating system. Ongoing work continues to keep the system up to date with new software releases and patches and Fujitsu is also looking up to two years ahead to further refreshes.

Conclusion

In conclusion, companies outsource for many different reasons, e.g. the lack of expertise, saving costs. Whether to outsource or not should not just be based on one reason especially if the reason is just to save costs. Outsourcing is only the right tool if it is for the right job, how to figure out which job is right is up to you.

The future of outsourcing appears to be a positive and bright one. Especially with this modern technological era, which makes it possible for outsourcers to take full advantage of an organization's different stages within its value chain.