Project Vision and Goals - irinkobela/MEDICARD-HMS GitHub Wiki

🧭 Project Vision and Goals

🎯 Vision

MEDICARD-HMS is envisioned as a modern, intuitive, and clinician-focused Hospital Management System (HMS) that reimagines how doctors interact with digital tools in high-pressure healthcare environments. Unlike traditional HMS platforms, which often hinder more than help, MEDICARD-HMS is designed to reduce cognitive load, minimize friction, and support decision-making in real-time.

Our goal is to deliver a system that feels like it was built for doctors, by doctors β€” fast, logical, and aligned with how clinical work actually happens.

πŸ’‘ Core Problems We Aim to Solve

Modern clinicians face several frustrations with current HMS systems:

  • Inefficient User Interfaces: Too many clicks, scattered information, slow performance.
  • Lack of Clinical Focus: Generic systems that don’t support specialty-specific workflows.
  • Poor Integration: Siloed systems for labs, imaging, and documentation.
  • Documentation Burden: Time-consuming, error-prone, and often redundant data entry.
  • Limited Decision Support: Few tools to proactively prevent errors or guide best practices.

πŸ”§ Design Philosophy

🩺 Doctor-Centric Design

  • Prioritize speed, clarity, and relevance for clinicians.
  • Minimize clicks, loading times, and screen switching.
  • Display critical info (e.g., allergies, vitals) at a glance.

🧠 Workflow-First Thinking

  • Mirror real clinical workflows (admission β†’ assessment β†’ treatment β†’ discharge).
  • Reduce handoff errors and improve team communication.

πŸ›‘ Patient Safety as a Core Feature

  • Built-in decision support (drug interactions, duplicate orders, critical alerts).
  • Smart order entry and medication reconciliation tools.

πŸ”„ Interoperability & Standards

  • HL7/FHIR-friendly design to enable future integrations with LIS, PACS, scheduling, and billing systems.

πŸ§ͺ Built for Specialty Needs

  • Support for ICU scoring systems, Cath Lab procedure tracking, ED flowsheets, and more.

πŸ“ˆ Strategic Goals (Short-to-Mid Term)

  • βœ… Set up a minimal but functional tech stack (Flask + PostgreSQL + React).
  • βœ… Implement secure user authentication (local + potential LDAP).
  • πŸ”„ Define and build out the initial Patient, User, and Encounter data models.
  • πŸ”„ Establish a working prototype for the Doctor Dashboard and Patient Chart views.
  • πŸ”„ Enable basic CPOE (Computerized Provider Order Entry) flows.
  • πŸ”œ Build clinical documentation tools with version tracking and smart templates.
  • πŸ”œ Add auditing, access control, and error logging mechanisms.

🌟 Long-Term Vision

  • AI-assisted documentation and order suggestions.
  • Predictive analytics dashboards (e.g., deterioration risk scores).
  • Real-time collaboration and messaging features.
  • Seamless telehealth integration.
  • Export-ready datasets for clinical research and registries.

πŸ§ͺ This project is under active development. Feedback, ideas, and real-world use cases are welcome to help shape the future of MEDICARD-HMS.