University Hospital, a 900-bed tertiary health care organization, is undergoing information systems development. What system would best meet its needs?

• A. Application Service Provider (ASP) model
• B. On-premises mainframe
• C. Standalone departmental systems
• D. Paper-based workflow

Answer: (A)

Choosing an IT setup that is scalable, integrated, and manageable for a large hospital is the key idea. The ASP model fits because it delivers software as a service from a vendor, hosted and accessed over the network, which is ideal for a 900-bed tertiary care system that needs wide access, rapid deployment, and regular updates across many departments. This approach supports integrated applications—such as electronic medical records, laboratory, radiology, scheduling, and other clinical and admin systems—while offloading much of the infrastructure management, backups, and disaster recovery to the provider. It also tends to reduce upfront capital costs and the burden on the hospital’s own IT staff, while offering scalable resources to grow with the organization and meet regulatory security and privacy requirements. In contrast, an on-premises mainframe would demand large upfront investment and ongoing specialized maintenance, standalone departmental systems can lead to data silos and poor coordination, and paper-based workflows are inefficient and incompatible with modern patient safety, reporting, and analytics needs.