COMPUTER SOFTWARE AND SYSTEMS

OBJECTIVES:

1. Identify the categories of software and their functions.

2. Describe four important analytic themes in Information Science.
3. Explain five types of programming languages and their capabilities.
4. Discuss PDA applications that can be used as part of physical assessment.
5. Explain the differences among LANs, WANs, and MANs.

Software

- Is the general term applied to the instructions that direct the computer’s hardware to perform
work.
- Consist of instructions communicated electronically to the hardware.

2 purposes:

1. Software is needed to translate instructions created by human language into machine language
(Binary numbers).
2. Packaged or stored computer is needed to make the computer an economical tool.

PROGRAMS/PACKAGE – are ordered sets of instructions that make up SOFTWARE.

EXAMPLE OF PROGRAMS

 Word processing program

 Spreadsheet program
 Presentation Graphic program
 Database Manager (Microsoft Access)

CATEGORIES OF SOFTWARE

3 basic types of software:

1. System software
- “Boots up”, (start up and initializes) the computer system; controls input,
output, and storage; and controls the operations of the application software.
- Helps speed up the computer’s processing, expands computer the power od
the computer by crating cache memory, reduces the amount of confusion
when multiple programs are running together,
- “Cleans up” the hard drive so that storage is managed efficiently.

EXAMPLE:

-Microsoft Windows

- Linux

- macOS

 Basic Input/Output System

 Operating System

2. Utility software
– consist of programs designed to support and optimize the functioning
of the computer system itself.
 - Helps the computer to run efficiently.

CATEGORIES
 Security programs – including primarily anti-virus, firewall, and
encryption programs, protect the computer and its data from
attacks that can be destroy programs and data.

EXAMPLE

- Security Programs
- Disk Management Utilities
- Backup Utilities
- Screen savers
- Archival Assistance Software
- Programming environment support programs

3. Applications software – includes the various programs that the users require to
perform day-to-day tasks.
- Includes all the various programs people use to do work, process, data, play
games, communicate others, and watch videos and multimedia programs on
a computer.
- Written for system users to make use of the computer.

EXAMPLE:

INFORMATION SCIENCE

- Is an interdisciplinary field primarily concerned with the analysis, collection,

classification, manipulation, storge, retrieval, movement, dissemination, and
uses of information (Stock & Stock, 2013).

4 key themes

1. Optimality – refers to achieving an optimum value for some desired outcome.

2. Performance – refer to almost any variable that is measured on a numerical scale, such as
cost, time (time to answer patient call light), etc.
3. Complexity – is a reality with the enormous masses of data and information generated,
collected, stored, and retrieved.
4. Structure – means developing a system for ordering and cataloging the data and
information, particularly in a database.
- Excellent structure serves to reduce the amount of time required to perform
operations on the database, such as search, retrieve, update, sort, and so
forth.
- When data are well structured and cataloged in a database, complexity can
actually be reduced because the system will not have to review all the data
to find particular items. It will have to search only the sectors in which the
data are going to be found, and the structure tells the programs that operate
on the database which sector is search.

Programming Languages

- Is a means of communicating with the computer.

Generations and Levels of Programming Languages

 Programming languages are divided into 5 generations, or sometimes into 3 levels. The term
“level” refers to how close the language is to the actual machine.

1st level includes the first two generations of programming

- Machine language and Assembly language

2nd level includes the next two generations of programming

- Procedural language and non-procedural language

3rd level (and the fifth generation)

- Natural language

1. Machine Language – is the true language of the computer

- any program must be translated into machine language before the computer
can execute it.
- consist only of the binary numbers 1 and 0, representing the ON and OFF
electrical impulses.
- All date – numbers, letters, and symbols – are represented buy combinations
of binary digits.
- Machine languages are dependent-each model of computer has its own
unique machine language.

EXAMPLE:

3 is represented by 8 binary numbers (00000011)

6 is represented by 00000110

2. Assembler Language
- Machine language is far more like the English language, but it is still very
close to machine language.
- One command in machine language is a single instruction to the processor.
- Instructions have a one-to-one correspondence with a machine language
instruction.

3. Procedural languages (Third-generation languages)

- Procedural languages require the programmer to specify both what the
computer is to di the procedure for how to do it.
- Far more English-like than assembles and machine languages.
- Programmers must learn the words the languages recognizes, and must use
those words in a rigid style and sequence.
- A single comma or letter out of place will cause the program to fail or crash.
- The style and sequence of a languages are called SYNTAX.

Visual Programming Languages – a Graphic User Interface Technology (GUI)

EXAMPLE:
Visual BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
Visual C++

4. Fourth-generation Languages - are specialized application programs that require more

involvement of the user in directing the program to do the work.
 - the user specifies what the program is to do, but not how the program is to
perform the task

EXAMPLE:

- Structured Query Language (SQL) - is a language designed for management

and query operations on a relational database.

5. Fifth-Generation Languages
- Fifth -generation or third level languages are called NATURAL LANGUAGES.
- The user tells the machine hat to do in the user’s own natural language or
through use of a set of very English-like commands.
- Voice recognition technology is integrated with the language so that voice
commands are recognized and executed.
- Any users could give understandable commands to the computer in his or
her own word style and accent

Biomedical test mining

- an exciting application of natural language processing (NLP)

- its purpose is to assist users to find information about a specific topic in
biomedical literature.

Example: DNorm – detects specific names (entered by the searcher) in the

journal.

Text Formatting Languages

- text formatting are not true programming languages.

- Used to format content originally text, for visual display in a system.
- Skills required to learn to format text are similar to the skills required to
learn a programming language, and informally they are called programming
languages.

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) – used to format text for the World-
Wide Wed and is one of the older formatting languages.

Example:

 Extensible Markup Language (XML) – restricted version of SGML and is used in most
in word processing programs.

 Standardized General Markup Language (SGML) -is the original markup language
-is actually a meta-language and the standard for markup language

HTML and XML adhere to the SGML pattern.

COMMON SOFTWARE PACKAGES FOR MICROCOMPUTERS

- The most common package sold with computers is a standard office package.

- Standard office package includes a word processing program, a spreadsheet program,

and a presentation graphics program.

- The upgraded versions usually add some form of database management system, an e-
mail system, a “publisher” program.

- Two most commonly used programs: The e-mail system and the word processor.
 - Another very common product is a desktop publisher. Most of these common programs
have to be written in two versions: for the IBM PC platform and for the Mac.

SOFTWARE PACKAGE OWNERSHIP RIGHTS

- A program sold to one customer can be installed on a very large number of machines. If
programs were sold outright, users would have every right to distribute them as they
wished.

- The buyer can use the product or resell it or loan it to a friend if so desired.

- Copying the product is not feasible.

- Purchasers of software do not buy full rights to the software. They purchase only a
license to use the software.

- Individually purchased software is licensed to one and only one computer.

- Fair use allows the purchaser to install the software on all the machines he or she
personally owns, provided the computers are for that user’s personal use only.

- SITE LICENSE is a way of buying in bulk, so to speak.

COMMON SOFTWARE USEFUL TO NURSES

- Most software system used by nursed are based in a Hospital Information System (HIS).

- HIS is a multipurpose program, designed to support many applications in hospitals and

their associated clinics.

- Components nurses use most include the electronic medical record for charting patient
care Admission-discharge-transfer (ADT) systems that help with patient tracking.

- Medication Administration Record (MAR) software, supplies inventory system through

which nurses charge IVs, dressings, and other supplies used in patient care, and
laboratory system that are used to order laboratory test and report the results.

- System for physician to document medical orders;

*Leapfrog group consider a computer physician order entry (CPOE) system, list it as a
separate item on their quality checklist.
* a computerized patient acuity system used to help with nurse staff allocation, and
perhaps there may be a hospital e-mail system used for at least some hospital
communication.

- Nurses are finding that they are able to build regional, national, and international
networks with their nursing colleagues with the use of chat rooms, bulletin boards,
conferencing system, and listservs on the Internet.
 - Personal digital assistants (PDAs), nurses may download any of thousands of software
applications (apps) onto their PDAs to assist them with patient care.

Programs includes; drug guides, medical dictionaries, and consult guides for a variety of
patient populations and clinical problems.

- Software can now be downloaded onto a PDA to measure heart and respiratory rate,
perform ultrasounds on various organs, test hearing, perform simple EKG, and many
other physical assessments can be obtained via a PDA.

- Most radiology equipment today is computer based. Many items of surgery equipment
exist only because computer processors are available to make them operate.

- Some nursing applications include a handy “dashboard,” an application that provides a

sort of a menu of options from which the nurse can choose/

- Dashboard- provide the nurse a quick way to order common output from certain
screens, or may provide some kind of alert that a task is due to be performed.

COMPUTER SYSTEMS

- Every functioning computer is a system.

- Computer system may refer to a single machine that is unconnected to any other
computer.

- Most healthcare professionals use computer systems consisting of multiple,

interconnected computers that functions to facilitate the work of groups of providers
and their support people in a system called network.
- Common types of computer networks:
*point-to-point
*(LAN) – a network that usually connects a small group of computers in a given
geographical area

*Metropolitan area network (MAN) – comparatively wider network that covers= regions-
like towns and cities

*Wide area network (WAN) – spans to even larger locality. It has the capacity to connect
various countries together.

- Point-to-point network is a very small network in chic all parts of the system are directly
connected via wires or wireless.

- If network capacity is too small, some users will experience a very long waits or perhaps
the system will crash from overload.

- Computer networks must allocate time and memory space to many users.
- Variety of allocation strategies for high-level communication in networks.

*Most common are token ring (developed by IBM)

*Star (also called multipoint; all communications go through a single hub computer)
*Bus (in which all computers are connected to a single line

- For very large networks, backbone communication technology is increasingly used.

- The use of systems in computer technology is based on system theory.

- System theory and its subset, provide the basis for understanding how the power of
individual computers has been greatly enhanced through the process of linking multiple
computers into a single system and multiple computer systems into networks.