The System Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Essay Example

This paper will assess the utility of the development life cycle. The System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is helpful because it provides guidelines to the ERP implementation process. Ultimately, it allows for the planning, designing, and creating of an information system for organizations (Motiwalla & Thompson, 2012). This has a practical application in the real world setting because different organizations have very different requirements regarding their needs for information systems. An interesting example of the use of this system is in the health care setting. Many hospitals and private care practices require the use of a SDLC to bolster their information systems, and the effectiveness of this system is directly tied into the ability to these organizations to help their patients.

Of particular relevance is the relationship between the SDLC and the electronic health record (EHR) system. Many health care organizations are beginning to use EHRs in lieu of paper records because these systems help them acquire sensitive patient information more quickly, allow this information to be simultaneously accessed by a variety of health care professionals, and helps reduce the chances of medical error (Sittig 1854). While there are many organizations available that produce this equipment for hospitals, organizations that see a large number of patients or have several different locations would need to have access to an information system that is able to handle their patient load and need to access patient information across diverse channels.

The SDLC process is particularly relevant to the EHR systems because hospitals constantly need to refine their practices to ensure that they are able to provide maximum benefits to their patients. The traditional SDLC cycle involves investigating, analyzing, designing, implementing, and maintaining the system. This is important for the information technology teams at these health centers who are responsible for refining the EHR systems in a manner that maximizes their utility at their particular organization. Since patient needs, staffing, billing, and hospital size and resources are constantly changing, the information system needs to constantly change as well in order to ensure that these needs could be met. It is therefore the responsibility of the information technology team to determine what these needs are and how the system could be reasonably modified to test these needs. It would then be necessary for the team to assess whether the applied intervention is helpful to the organization, and then to modify it accordingly if this is not the case.

Overall, information systems developed using the traditional SDLC cycle are applicable to a variety of fields, but a lot is at stake when considering their use in the health care setting. The ability for health care professionals to quickly retrieve patient records have contributed to their ability to cure sickness and save lives. Therefore, the importance of the IT professional is heightened in this type of practice as well. While they do not work directly with the patients, their ability to optimize the EHR system provides direct support to the health care professionals, which in turn increases their ability to effectively treat and manage their patients (Thurston 510). Therefore, it is important to consider the need of expert IT professionals in this particular field. Although IT is not traditionally associated with the ability to save lives, IT professionals in the health care setting work hard at all hours in order to ensure that this will be the case.

Works Cited

Motiwalla LF, Thompson J. Enterprise Systems for Management. Pearson Education, Inc, 2012.

Sittig DF, Singh H. Electronic Health Records and National Patient-Safety Goals. The New England Journal of Medicine 36(2012): 1854-1860.

Thurston J. Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners  10.7(2014): 510-513.