NHS omputer System Failures Affecting Patient Care - Assignment Example

This report is intended to provide an introduction to healthcare information systems accompanied by narration of NHS as its practical example. It further highlights drawbacks associated with the NHS and how they affected the patients concerned. MEDICINE AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS Computers have assisted man ever since their inception. The infusion of Information Technology in the field of health and medicine has led to the rebirth of the said field. Technological advancements that have affected the field of health have affected the human society as a whole directly and have mostly proved to be beneficial rather than hazardous. Formally speaking, the definition of Medical Informatics, as quoted at openclinical.com, is stated as follows:  Medical Informatics is the "scientific field that deals with biomedical information, data, and knowledge - their storage, retrieval, and optimal use for problem solving and decision making. It accordingly touches on all basic and applied fields in biomedical science and is closely tied to modern information technologies, notably in the areas of computing and communication (medical computer science)"  [Stanford Medical Informatics]. Thus, in the light of the above-mentioned definition, Medical Informatics can very well be termed as the handling of data with respect to health and medicine with the assistance of computers and computer related systems. Medical Information Management, or simply put, the managing of all information related to health and medicine has become an integral part of the health care profession in the modern times. The present state of Health and Medicine cannot be executed without the involvement of information systems that are computer based. Medical Informatics can very well be termed as a field of information processing and health related tasks that involve the following processing: Medical cognitive tasks. This may involve the assessment of severity of a disease by analyzing the prior medical record history of a patient. Health Information Processing, The integration of healthcare related data that may possess different technological backgrounds at their respective ends. Communication tasks related to health. This may involve the coordination of physicians, patient and nursing staff within a healthcare facility. It may also refer to the integration of health related data present all over a certain boundary or area. Decision making tasks that are involved in healthcare such as the selection of prescription drugs upon the input of symptoms of patient’s state. Education and research related to Health such as the innovation in pharmacology and also in the methods of evaluating diseases and performing surgeries. Technological aspects that support health. These may involve tests that assess a person’s health. Technological advancements have made it possible that medical tests be conducted as such advanced levels that the health of an individual may be evaluated. Maintenance of Health Data. This data is in a vast range. Its variations extend from small clinics to large hospital databases. The health services in an organization and those related to the manufacturing of medical technologically advanced devices are all included in the category of health related data. Healthcare Information Systems have proved to be a cause of distress at times for patients. Following is an account of practical information system application in healthcare. This narration includes the problems that arose and the way patients were made to suffer because of it. INTRODUCTION TO NHS NHS OR NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE is a body that was established in UK. The core idea behind the establishment of National Health Services-NHS was to provide high quality of healthcare to all the patients. This was specially intended keeping in mind that no patient should be made to suffer because of his financial stature. Thus apart from very few procedures the NHS unanimously provides medical services to all its patients that are UK residents. With the current population of the country being approximately 62 million, the entire system was aimed at serving just as many patients. The magnitude of the systems can also be judged by the fact that its employee count is compared to that of the employees working at the Wal-Mart. The Structure of the system is based on secondary care, primary care trust, acute trusts, ambulance trusts, care trusts, mental health trusts and NICE (agencies controlled by the NHS.) During its implementation it was aimed at centering of all health related data from all over UK. Furthermore it was proposed to be implemented with the help of medical Information Systems by integrating them all into a combined network throughout the State. THE PROBLEM The establishment of this combined interactive system has proved to be a cause of distress due to quite a number of flaws in the system. Over the years it has eventually been proven that despite various attempts to safeguard it the system has finally proven to be a failed attempt. Since its inception, there was always one issue or the other that inhibited the successful growth of the system. Back in the year 1996 (The Independent 1996) NHS sought to create a centralized database of all health related data that would be accessible to all the stakeholders. Severe opposition to such an attempt was faced at all level. (Telegraph, 2007) This project continued to be opposed to the intricacies and threats involved with it. The system was facing all sorts of problems like the delaying of computerized scheduled patient operations, subscription of timely and accurate medicines, failing to detect and ensure treatment of cancer patients within two weeks and those of emergent nature within four hours. Due to its nationwide scope integrity and interoperability could not succeed practically even though constant financial backup was provided to the system by the State government. Finally, the latest on the front of the NHS integrated IT project is that there still is no hope of the success on the system. The Guardian UK quotes a source from the Health department to have said: “The £12.7bn National Program for IT is being ended after years of delays, technical difficulties, contractual disputes and rising costs.” (Campbell, 2011) And again, "It was meant to be a very helpful thing for NHS staff and patients but instead has become this amazingly top-heavy, hideously expensive program. The problem is, it didnt deliver." (Campbell, 2011) "It was too ambitious, the technology kept changing, and loads and loads of money has been put into it. Its wasted a lot of money that should have been spent on nurses and improving patient care, and not on big international IT companies." (Campbell, 2011) FAILURE OF NHS AFFECTS PATIENTS’ HEALTH. Non availability of data due to data integration problems affects medical treatments. Being a very huge database system the integration problems hindered medical facilities in getting the medical history or records of patients timely. This in turn created redundancy in treatment procedures and delays in assessment. The sufferings caused to patients due to these anomalies sometimes end up into severe disasters like death or cancer like diseases. The postcode lottery based decision making denied medical care and drug administration to the deserving patients and they were left to die. The distribution or allotment of expensive drugs is controlled through a decision support system that uses the NHS databases. The results that are produced through the trend analysis mechanisms for predicting the most vulnerable patients are moderated by the authorities. Despite many hopes and claims of positively skewed allocation of drugs, there were significant errors reported in decisions of priorities. In order to frame the discrepancies in the decision making The Rare Cancer Forum gathered and analyzed the data regarding allocation of drugs through postcode lottery mechanism. The result was an appeal to the ministers for stoppage of current drug allocation procedures terming it as “bizarre”. According to the research done by The Rare Cancer Forum the irregularities in expensive drug distribution were very high as the patient of an area were totally denied the administration of drugs while almost requests from other area were fulfilled. Due to the erroneous allocation of drugs the usefulness of optimized drug allocation mechanism proved to be highly ineffective. The deserving patients did not receive drugs due to the expense optimization technique that compares the expense and effectiveness ratio for drug allocation. The people termed the wrong decisions of drug allocation as death sentence. REFERENCES Bloxham, A. Aug 10, 2008. “£13 bn NHS computer system failures affecting patient care.” The Telegraph. [Online] Available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2535099/13bn-NHS-computer-system-failures-affecting-patient-care.html [Accessed on 6 December 2011.] Campbell, D. September 22, 2011. “NHS told to abandon delayed IT project.” The Guardian. [Online] Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/sep/22/nhs-it-project-abandoned [Accessed on 6 December 2011.] Connor, S. August 30, 2008. “NHS faces £700 million legal action over IT projects.” The Independent. [Online] Available at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nhs-faces-163700m-legal-action-over-it-project-913298.html [Accessed on 6 December 2011.] Goossen, W., Goossen, A., Zel Van Der, M. December 2010. “Detailed Clinical models, A Review.” Healthcare Informatics Research. [Online] Available at http://pdf.medrang.co.kr/Hir/2010/016/Hir016-04-01.pdf [Accessed on 6 December 2011.] Heath, N. June 23, 2009. “Four years on, Which NHS projects have failed to hit their targets?” Silicon. [Online] Available at http://www.silicon.com/management/public-sector/2009/06/23/four-years-on-which-nhs-projects-have-failed-to-hit-their-targets-39444434/ [Accessed on 7 December 2011..] McCue, A. July 27, 2004. “£5 bn NHS IT failure warning.” Silicon. [Online] Available at http://www.silicon.com/management/cio-insights/2004/07/27/5bn-nhs-it-failure-warning-39122638/ [Accessed on 7 December 2011.] Read More