Q. Explain the implications of using each of the system changeover methods at Health centres to change from the existing manual system to the new CHIS.
Ans. The process of putting the new information system online, retiring the old one is termed as system changeover. Depending upon the factors like risk level involved, maintenance costs and type of the system developed, different changeover methods are adapted by the companies. A choice is made by the analysts, management, IT staff and users among the four changeover methods:
Direct cutover method
Parallel operation
pilot operation and
phased operation
Direct cutover causes the system changeover from old system to new system immediately. Since the existing system is manula in the case of Child Heatlth Information System project, there is no risk involved in shifting to the new system immediately. This cutover approach offers less maintenace cost to the Health Department. Since CHIS is an in-house application there are some initial implementation problems involved with the new system and the health centre employees has to get acquainted with the operating procedures and techniques. Even if the newly implemented system fails, there is not much problem in continuing with the old one until the errors are corrected. Since CHIS is not a commercial project and much business issues are not involved with this, the new system can be implemented immediately without considering the monthly, quarterly and annual financial cycles.
In parallel operation changeover method, both the old and the new information systems operate fully for a specified period. Since there is no existing information system in health centres and health department, there is no question of running both the systems in parallel and compare the performance of the new system with the old one. Ofcourse the Health Department has an option to maintain the manual records if it has some suspicions in the initial stages of implementation. Parallel maintenance costs are negligible here, because the existing system is manual and it is a non business scenario.
Pilot operation changeover involves implementing the new system at a selected health centre called the pilot site and observe its performance. During this period the other health centres as well as the pilot centre continue with the existing manual system. After proving successful, direct cutover method is used to implement the new system everywhere. But there are no special benefits involved in implementing this changeover method with CHIS because there is no risk of old system failure and maintenace costs are also not high as the existing system is manual.
New system is implemented in stages or modules in phased operation changeover method. The entire Child health information system is divided into subsystems such as update records system, inventory maintenance system, national reporting system. In the beginning, only update records sytem can be implemented, and after assessing its performance at all the health centres, the other subsystems can be implemented. But these modules when implemented individually cannot meet the objective of the Health Department in maintaining a central level Child Health Information System.Phased implementation demands more technical resources at every phase and might cause a problem in CHIS.
