Hsa 520 week 7 - Coursework Example

Analysis of IM/IT Health Information Systems (HIS) have become essential in every health care organization. HIS refer to the set of procedures and components presented in an organized manner with an aim of generating meaningful information, which is primal to decision making pertaining to health care management. HIS aids in the processing, the storage, retrieval and the use of the information, in a single or a network of health care organizations. Key words: Patient Care Applications, Management and Enterprise Systems, E-Health Applications, Strategic Decision-support system (SDSS) Analysis of IM/IT Introduction The decisions made through the HIS effectively manage the health services at all levels (Winter & Haux 2011). HIS are important because, just like any other business, healthcare urgently needs proper management for the business to continue running smoothly. In the purview of HIS, every patient’s healthcare record is maintained punctiliously while ensuring that confidential information is secure. Health care information professionals endure the responsibility of keeping, updating and ensuring that the healthcare information of the patient is safe. Physicians, medical laboratories, use this information and the management of the healthcare organization in their bid to ameliorate the services provided (Maria 2012). HIS exist in a myriad of ways, such as patient care applications, management and enterprise systems, e-health applications and strategic decision support applications. Each of these applications has specific benefits to health care organizations. Patient Care Applications Technology presents opportunities of providing health care in an effective and efficient manner. The advent of smart phones and tablets has made the use of patient care applications possible. Mobile technology makes use of Patient Care Applications to manage the information of patients. By 2017, mHealth’s market is postulated as $26 billion. In a hospital setting, the Patient Care applications are important since Physicians and nurses have time constraints and these applications present caregivers with relevant patient information at the point of care provision. In effect, this encourages collaborative decision-making process and errors are reduced (Skidmore 2013). With this information system, caregivers do not frustrate patients with similar questions from time to time. The patients have a heightened quality of services and experiences in the health care organization. In surgery, the Patient Care Applications play a key role. During surgeries, doctors often need to access information, both prior to the operation and during the operation. Some applications can help the surgeon monitor and guide his actions during the operation besides aiding in monitoring critical signs thereof. Any health organization with the interest of patients at heart have no option other than embracing a Patient care Application. The management should take advantage of the modern technology of mobile devices and equip all care providers with at one personal tablet or smart phone. Recently, a doctor in German successfully used an augmented reality iPad Application to complete a liver operation on a patient. However, the threat of security is anticipated with the use of these applications on mobile devices. Research shows that 81% of all the health organizations store personal data on the diagnosis of the patient on mobile devices, but only half of them have gone a further step of securing the information. The management can require the care providers to use encryption and authentication to secure their data (Skidmore 2013). By so doing, an organization stands to benefit a great deal through the utilization of these Patient Care Applications and the use of mobile devices due to the convenience of accessing information with immediacy, as opposed to computers. Management and Enterprise Systems Management and enterprise systems provide the right people with the right information at the right time. In a health care organization, not all data is managed through a central application. As such, the information in the non-core applications is difficult to access, process, share and secure. These unstructured data may include forms, photos, faxes and papers, among other content. Manager of health care organizations ought to employ the use of management and enterprise systems like Enterprise Content Management (ECM) that is capable of capturing, storing and availing content that is not structured (Institute for Health Technology Transformation 2013). ECM provided the information to the right people when needed, within the structured content. Management and enterprise systems are applicable in several processes in the health care organization. In service delivery, ECM integrates the information, which healthcare providers would otherwise ignore due to its unavailability and hence cause errors and delays while trying to find this unstructured information, into a single system. ECM has the ability to capture both electronic and paper data that regards to patients and assigns the data to various patient profiles accordingly. Long queues in hospitals will reduce with the adoption of ECM since it captures processes and distributes both the clinical and financial data that the patient comes with during admission (Institute for Health Technology Transformation 2013). Without doubt, the leaders of the health care facility should inevitably take include these applications in the strategic plan, especially the ECM, since it integrates structured and unstructured data into one single system. E-Health Applications Electronic health applications are of a broad category. Even so, the main ones are consumer informatics, clinical and medical informatics, and telemedicine. Consumer informatics enables patients and the public to communicate on topics of health. For instance, Consumer-to-consumer (C-2-C) applications emerge as a strong way of empowering the public and individuals. Currently, there are almost 30,000 websites based on health, and surprisingly, they are the most visited among all the sites. The leaders of the organization ought to include this element of e-health applications in the strategic plan to educate and prescribe over-the-counter medicine for the patients through a website, instead of them visiting the hospital. Long and unnecessary queues in hospitals have been a major setback in hospitals and the use of C-2-C applications is anticipated to solve this issue. However, the increasing reliance on websites calls for the health care professionals and the industry as a whole to set quality control and standards for such websites to avoid misleading the users. In the strategic plan, the leaders should include a plan to choose a qualified person to conduct the updating of the website and response to the questions of the patients on the website. Strategic Decision-support system (SDSS) Health care professionals use SDSS to help in making clinical decisions in their work. The systems aid the health care providers into making potent decision on diagnosis, for instance. There is an anticipated increase in the use of SDSS in the purview of health care since the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act stipulates that for those healthcare providers who do not embrace the use of IT in health care by 2015 will be penalized by having their Medicare reimbursements reduced. One type of SDSS employs a knowledge base, that is, it uses rules to the data of a patient through an inferring machine and then the results are displayed to the end user. However, the SDSS has to be integrated into the health care system, which is already complicated (Svensson 2002). As a result, infrastructure maintenance and strains on the applications are instanced. Importance of System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) The SDLC entails processes that are sequential through which information systems in the health care organization are developed. The processes include; analysis, design, programming, testing, implementation and maintenance. Owing to the complex nature of a hospital’s information system, every personnel in the hospital should be involved all the phases of the system development to learn throughout the development stages. The SDLC is important since it provides detailed steps, entails documentation, ideal for monitoring large projects, tolerates alterations in the Management Information Systems and it is easy to maintain. Despite its time and cost consuming properties, SDLC is very important in a health care setting. For a health organization to have a secure access to health care and patient information across the health care management electronic system, the health professionals should use some level of encryption for the information to prevent unauthorized access (Skidmore 20130. For instance, blood diagnosis results should be encrypted so that another physician may not alter it while he or she is in service in another shift of work. Recommendations Owing to the time and cost concerns that are inherent in SDLC, a better alternative needs adoption. Rapid Application Development (RAD) integrates joint application development, prototyping and applies CASE tools. This alternative has the benefit of reduced cost of development, engages the health care professionals more during the process of development and the speed is high. The patients will receive better services since the health care professionals have more time and experience with the information system (Winter & Haux 2011). In addition, making the use of authentication in the access of information will improve the security of the patient information and hence an improved system with no security compromises. For instance, diagnosis information may be lost or be altered by another health professional in the course of his duties, either intentionally or by mistake. However, with authentication only the person with the password and login details is able to access the information. Conclusion The essentiality of HIS in the health care settings is apparent. The patient care application uses mobile devices to present information to physicians and nurses while Management and Enterprise systems have the ability to integrate unstructured data into the information system of the organization. E-Health Applications include C-2-C applications that include websites that enable the patient and the community to communicate on health matters while the strategic decision-support systems aid in making potent decisions. SDLC is important because of its ease to implement features, although RAD is preferable. Authentication and encryption of patient information is the surest way of securing the information. Any organization with prospects in health care provision should pay heed to all these considerations. References Institute for Health Technology Transformation. (2013, April 22). Benefits of health care enterprise content management (ECM). Retrieved from http://ihealthtran.com/wordpress/2013/04/benefits-of-health-care-enterprise-content- Management-ecm/ Maria, R. Management Information System in Health Care. (2012, January 14). Slide share. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/NewNurseMaria/management-information-system-in-health-care Rouse, M. (2010, October). Clinical decision support system (CDSS). Tech Target. Retrieved from http://searchhealthit.techtarget.com/definition/clinical-decision-support-system-CDSS Skidmore, S. (2013, November 6). Gaining Competitive Advantage in Patient Care with Enterprise Apps. Apperian. Retrieved from http://www.apperian.com/gaining-competitive-advantage-patient-care-enterprise-apps/ Svensson, P. (2002). eHealth Applications in Health Care Management. A journal on eHealth, Vol. 1. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC135526/ Winter, A., & Haux, R. (2011). Health information systems: Architectures and strategies. London: Springer. Read More