Development of a Hospital Management Information System for UNIZIK Teaching Hospital Awka

Healthcare administration at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Awka remains burdened by paper-based patient records, inefficient appointment scheduling, and fragmented billing processes that compromise service quality and patient safety. This study develops a hospital management information system (HMIS) for the hospital, integrating modules for patient registration, electronic medical records, appointment scheduling, laboratory result management, and billing. The system was developed using the Spring Boot Java framework for the backend, Angular for the frontend, and PostgreSQL for the relational database. Role-based access control differentiates permissions across doctors, nurses, administrative staff, and patients. System development followed the Rational Unified Process methodology. Functional testing was conducted using simulated patient records representing 500 encounters across four clinical departments, with integration testing verifying inter-module data consistency. Results indicate that patient registration time was reduced from an average of 18 minutes to under 4 minutes. Laboratory result access was made available to requesting clinicians within 30 seconds of entry. Billing error rate in automated invoicing was 0.3 percent across test records. Clinical staff reported a 67 percent improvement in workflow efficiency during structured observation sessions. The study concludes that integrated HMIS solutions significantly improve operational efficiency and clinical data accessibility in Nigerian tertiary health facilities. Recommendations include HL7 FHIR standard adoption for inter-system health data exchange.