Enterprise Architecture in Healthcare Settings
Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a process and a conceptual blueprint of an enterprise that ensures all of the needed aspects and components of an enterprise are integrated and efficient. Components include processes, functional organizations, location, data, and applications.
In healthcare, there are many sectors within a hospital or healthcare institution to be considered. Starting from the first registration you make as a patient up to your final follow-up check-ups, several divisions and enterprise components are functioning in order to produce secure and efficient services. The role of EA in healthcare is to provide the framework to ensure efficient patient care. This could be well associated with health IT as these are the data generating sector of this enterprise allowing for data driven decisions. EA also ensures proper interoperability and communication between different aspects of a healthcare-based enterprise allowing the identification of several components and its relationships to each other.
TOGAF as a Framework
The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) is a much more generic framework compared to other frameworks. This allows any firm to utilize TOGAF for their EA. With the flexibility it has, TOGAF allows any organization to evaluate and build their appropriate architecture. The TOGAF is split to four categories:
i) Business architecture: focused on business methods related to its objectives
ii) Data architecture: explains methods of data storage and retrieval.
iii) Application architecture: deals with developing applications and the interaction between them.
iv) Technical architecture: focused on software and hardware infrastructure that support and are interrelated.
TOGAF can predict, recognize, and adapt to the changes in the architecture of an enterprise. This is very advantageous, especially in fields such as healthcare where continuous technological advancements and external factors are affecting the delivery and maintenance of services.
References:
Sajid, Muhammad, & Ahsan, Kamran. (2016). Role of enterprise architecture in healthcare organizations and knowledge-based medical diagnosis system. JISTEM 13(2), 181–192.
DOH Enterprise Architecture 2011 v.1 pp.23–43
