The language of health informatic - Essay Example

THE LANGUAGE OF HEALTH INFORMATICS 2 Significance of database in improving patient care It had been indicated earlier that the use of health informatics was not going to benefit just the service providers but the service users also, who in this case are the patients. Since the start of the implementation of the health information system, patient outcomes have improved in two major ways. First, the quantum of patients served by the hospital has gone up tremendously. This is because health informatics eliminates the manual search, processing and use of data, which his time consuming (Sullivan and Wyatt, 2010).

What is more, there has been the added advantage of health informatics in promoting evidence based practice within the hospital. Consequently, nurses and other practitioners serve patients based on the use of evidence based care, which goes a long way to improve the quality of health care given to patients. Departments utilizing the data stored in the systemIndeed, almost every other department utilizes the data stored in the system in one way or the other. This is because of the integrating nature in which the system has been created.

Due to the integration, the system is not useful only to the departments directly health service like pharmacy, nursing, physiologist, radiology, laboratory and specialist care. Rather, non-health service departments like accounts, security and customer relations also use the system. As far as the non-health service providers are concerned, they use the data to have a fairer understanding of patients under the care of the hospital and how their entry and movements from the hospital are proceeding.

For example, the accounts department needs to have basic data on medications received and general service rendered so as to use the electronic billing section of the system (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2012).System languageThe database has been made in such a way that it has been sub-divided among various departments. This way, all departments within the system has its own miniature system that is together networked to a centralized system. Within the miniature or decentralized systems, language is used as and how it suits the department.

There is basically variation of language on the system. However, when it comes to the centralized system, there is a summative section that has been produced in clear cut and ordinary language easy for transversal interpretation. Accessing data on the systemThe way and manner in which the present system has been arranged, making the system run on both decentralized format and a centralized format makes the access to data very unique. Basically, everyone on the network can have access to data from every department but not everyone on the network can manipulate data from other departments.

This has been done to ensure data security within the system (Haye, 2012). For example even though the pharmacy department may access data from the physiologist to give out drugs, the pharmacy department is not permitted to manipulate by way of editing or altering any data entered from the physiology department. The same argument is true for all other cross departmental use and access to data.Role of IT department on the systems The role of the information technology department on the current system, especially when it comes to ways of ensuring that various applications and systems interface and share information, the department plays the central facilitator role.

That is, it is the information technology department that organizes the inflow and outflow of data from each miniature or decentralized system across the wider network. What this means is that when any department enters data that data remains in the miniature system of that department alone until it is forwarded or fused into the networked system. Therefore until such time that the data is fused into the network, they are not accessible to the various departments. CITED WORKSHaye G. T. Elementary Healthcare through Community Mobilization Programs.

United Express Limited: Chicago. 2012. Print.Sullivan F and Wyatt J. ABC of Health Informatics. New York: Blackwell BMJ Books. 2010. Print.U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Leading health indicators. 2012. Web. February 14, 2013