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ACADEMIA Letters The role of Management Information Systems (MIS) in Pandemic Management. Philip Kiilu, Kenyatta University Abstract Pandemics have no doubt been one of the biggest challenge to mankind. Being inevitable, it’s prudent to innovate better and smart strategies to minimize their impact. Management Information Systems (MIS) provides a key platform in tackling pandemic challenges by improving the quality and time taken in decision making. Faster and better decision making is becoming essential and popular in all spheres of operations and health is not an exception. Introduction Accurate and reliable information is the foundation of sound decision-making and is essential for health system policy development and implementation, governance and regulation, health research, human resources development, health education and training, service delivery and financing. According to World Health Organization (WHO), A pandemic is a worldwide spread of a new disease (1).Such diseases spread rapidly,have huge impact on the economy and wellbeing of the people and if left unchecked may be fatal. The effect of the influenza pandemic in 1918 was so severe that the average life span in the US was depressed by 10 years. The influenza virus had a profound virulence, with a mortality rate at 2.5% compared to the previous influenza epidemics, which were less than 0.1% (2). Academia Letters, October 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Philip Kiilu, kaphilzx@gmail.com Citation: Kiilu, P. (2021). The role of Management Information Systems (MIS) in Pandemic Management. Academia Letters, Article 3775. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3775. 1 (H1N1) 2009 virus reported counts of over 16,000 deaths from pandemic H1N1 represent individually tested and confirmed deaths, primarily reported from countries with adequate resources for widespread laboratory testing (3). Globally, as of 04:32pm CEST, 15 Oct, 2021, there has been 239,437,517 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 4,879,235 deaths and 6,495,672,032 vaccine doses administered as reported by WHO (4). Management Information Systems foster the process of decision-making capabilities thereby increasing efficiency and approach to pandemics. An Information System is an integrated set of components for collecting, storing and processing data and for delivering information, cards, and digital products (5). This paper is a theoretical review of how Management Information Systems (MIS) can be used optimally in Pandemic Management, accelerate decision making process thereby reducing the impact of pandemics to mankind. Management Information Systems (MIS) and Decision Making According to James Reason (1990) (6) every decision-making process produces a final choice that may or may not prompt an action. Decisions vary depending on the structure and options provided for making the decision. Modern information technologies offer new and enhanced solutions for businesses, companies or other scientific institutions, creating new work surroundings based on computer communication between people. Information is power and the more of it held the more powerful an organisation can become but information has a far lesser impact when presented as raw data (6). Health Information Systems Since the 1990s, substantial investments in data collection and analysis have improved the knowledge and understanding of global health, but huge gaps remain between what health professionals do know and what they should know to improve the health of the world’s population. A Reliable and timely health information is an essential foundation for public health action, particularly when resources are limited and funding decisions can mean the difference between life and death. In recent years, strong health systems have been recognized as central to achieving better health outcomes, and strong Health Information Systems (HIS) are the backbone of such strong health systems. A properly functioning HIS disseminates the right information into the right hands at the right time, enabling policymakers, managers, and individual service providers to make informed choices on decisions ranging from patient care to Academia Letters, October 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Philip Kiilu, kaphilzx@gmail.com Citation: Kiilu, P. (2021). The role of Management Information Systems (MIS) in Pandemic Management. Academia Letters, Article 3775. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3775. 2 national budgets (Measure Evaluation, 2015). Monitoring Health Information Systems performance can help produce timely and high-quality data that can be used for evidence-informed decision making to plan, implement, and improve health programs and allocate resources effectively. A Health Information System (HIS) provides the base for decision-making and has four key functions: data generation, compilation, analysis and synthesis, and communication and use. The health information system collects data from the health sector and other relevant sectors, analyses the data and ensures their overall quality, relevance and timeliness, and converts data into information for health-related decision-making (7) A properly functioning health information system (HIS) gets the right information into the right hands at the right time, enabling policymakers, managers, and individual service providers to make informed choices on decisions spanning from patient care to national budgeting and planning. Monitoring HIS performance can help produce timely and high-quality data that can be used for evidence-informed decision making to plan, implement, and improve health programs and allocate resources effectively (8). Role of MIS in Pandemic Management. Data Collection A Management Information System provides integral accurate data collection, storage, processing and analysis platform to identify areas with high cases for better decision making and better case management in various geographical locations. Contact Tracing The use of Geographic Information System (GIS) can help in accurate and timely tracing of contacts thereby containing the infections in a particular geographical area and reducing infections. Communication Caters to the diverse information needs of managers and the entire organization, including the key decision-makers. MIS can also create better communication flow by filling the information gaps and driving performance through availing of the much needed information to various users based on the nature of information required by each user. Academia Letters, October 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Philip Kiilu, kaphilzx@gmail.com Citation: Kiilu, P. (2021). The role of Management Information Systems (MIS) in Pandemic Management. Academia Letters, Article 3775. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3775. 3 Research MIS helps in maintaining, processing, retrieving and managing crucial business data key in assisting in complex decision-making by the management. Data operations and use becomes easy, timely and faster thereby increasing efficiency and decision making timelines. Transaction Processing MIS Helps in promoting legible, complete documentation, paperless and accurate, streamlined coding and billing in health facilities. This help in providing faster and reliable services, cutting on operational costs and better record keeping of patients. The above roles of MIS are not exhaustive but throws insights into some key roles. According to Maria Malliarou, Jan, 2009 (12) looking closely at HIS and specifically Nursing Information Systems (NIS),she enlisted below benefits of NIS (Nursing Information Systems): 1. Helps spent more time with patient and less time at nurse station. 2. Reduce paperwork / paper loss. 3. Automated tools of nursing documentation. 4. Fosters uniform standards of nurse-care programming (nursing process). 5. Cost reduction (Fewer losses). 6. Quality can be measured. Ideally in a pandemic scenario there are critical measures which are used to show the status and for governments to know whether they are winning or losing the war against the pandemic. For instance in the case of Covid-19 pandemic below measures (not exhaustive) have been used across the globe: 1. The number of COVID-19 infections in patients with symptoms, 2. The number of COVID-19 infections in patients without symptoms (Asymptomatic), 3. The number of COVID-19 hospital admission in the general population, 4. The number of COVID-19 patients moved to ICU (or described as “severe”), 5. The number of COVID-19 patients progressed from “severe “to “critical”, Academia Letters, October 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Philip Kiilu, kaphilzx@gmail.com Citation: Kiilu, P. (2021). The role of Management Information Systems (MIS) in Pandemic Management. Academia Letters, Article 3775. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3775. 4 6. The number of COVID-19 deaths or mortality rate. 7. The number of COVID-19 patients recorded in a particular day. These are some of the key metrics which can easily and accurately be delivered by use of MIS specifically HIS and GIS. Conclusion Management Information Systems (MIS) plays an integral part in pandemic management through improved decision making. On the other hand adoption of Health Information systems (HIS) is highly recommended as the world fights the current Covid-19 pandemic and even future pandemics. According to Pär J Ågerfalk et al 14 Determining what constitutes information systems value and success in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: In order to examine how successful a particular technology is in aiding the fight against COVID-19, it is necessary to understand what constitutes “value”.Comprehensively defining and capturing the value of a system is usually very challenging, as it often manifests in many multi-dimensional and polymorphous, ephemeral ways, (Schryen, 2013). Academia Letters, October 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Philip Kiilu, kaphilzx@gmail.com Citation: Kiilu, P. (2021). The role of Management Information Systems (MIS) in Pandemic Management. Academia Letters, Article 3775. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3775. 5 References 1. https://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/frequently_asked_questions/pandemic/en/ 2. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Similarities and differences between COVID-19 and Influenza 3. https://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/frequently_asked_questions/about_disease/en/ 4. WHO Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard 5. Aferdita Berisha-Shaqiri July 2014, Management Information System and DecisionMaking, University of Prishtina. 6. James Reason, 1990. Human Error. 7. https://eternalsunshineoftheismind.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/information-systems-inorganisations-2/ 8. Paul, P., Bhuimali, A., Ghose, M., & E., P. (2016). Health Information Systems: The Issues related to Governmental Initiatives, Political and Economics—A Theoretical Overview. IRA- International Journal of Technology & Engineering (ISSN 24554480), 4(2), 117-125. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.21013/jte.v4.n2.p3 9. Health Metrics Network Framework and Standards for Country Health Information Systems, World Health Organization, January 2008. 10. Understanding How Kenya Monitors Health Information System Performance, September 2017, USAID and Measure Evaluation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 11. https://bettercare.co.za/learn/public-health/text/03-11.html#objectives-1 12. Al-Nakib Noofal Ahmed Mohsen Mohammed et al,January,2017, An empirical assessment of the link between Decision support system (DSS) capabilities, competencies and firm performance: A mediating role of absorptive capacity, School of Management, Wuhan University of Technology, a. Wuhan, China. 13. Maria Malliarou, 2009, Advantages of Information Systems in Health Services, University of Thessaly. 14. Pär J Ågerfalk, Kieran Conboy & Michael D Myers. Information systems in the age of pandemics: COVID-19 and beyond. Academia Letters, October 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Philip Kiilu, kaphilzx@gmail.com Citation: Kiilu, P. (2021). The role of Management Information Systems (MIS) in Pandemic Management. Academia Letters, Article 3775. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3775. 6