The challenges of Interoperability - Essay Example

? of The Challenges of Interoperability The migrating path for the Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a complex processing that needs efficient planning before a hospital administration plans to introduce interoperability for unifying its numerous operating systems. Being a CIO of a hospital with numerous computerized data entering systems, I would consider issues of higher expense, maintenance of the major operating system providing interoperability to other operating system of the hospital. There are other issues that a CIO of a healthcare organization must focus on. It could involve the training of the officials to enter the specifications of the records focusing on the type of nomenclatures. It should be noted that the continuous research and development in the field of health care has made it quite complicated for the transmission of interoperability migrating path. In this paper, I would take the position of a CIO of a health care organization to discuss the challenges of interoperability. I would stress on the significance of the migration path for the Electronic Health Record (EHR) acquisition and propose the managers of the organization to pass the clauses to take the acquisition underway by following the following criteria: Challenges of Interoperability: I. Electronic Health Records (EHR) Vendors: It is quite evident that a newer setup by connecting different leverage of information operating systems in the hospital for information management would need training of the professionals. Traditionally, it has been noted that EHR Vendors are a special approach for this purpose. By acquiring an EHR vendor, it would be much easier for the professionals to get used to the electronic record system. Once the EHR information systems are easily connected to numerous other data recording systems, they will automatically help the professionals to use it on a continuous basis. The operating technical training can actually act as a factor of making information systems successful (Amatayakul). II. Connection and Nomenclatures: I would suggest that the organization follows the information categories to make it certain for data delivery methods in order to connect to other departments. This will need coding and nomenclatures to be added. Considering numerous operating systems being used in the organization which I am working for, it comes as a challenge to actually share information among different departments, because each department has a different set of requirements for data specification. For instance, the operating system, namely Laboratory Information System (LIS) within the organization, is dealing with the information consumed by the internal departments. It has to be used externally by other health organizations as well to make sure the commutative statistics of the disease is observable. This will help in the process of providing assistance to the patients with technologically advanced interface (Amatayakul). By providing interoperability among the different operating systems used for entering disease specifications and health records, it will be much easier for the organization to link up the nursing and administration department. But it should be noted, that currently Healthcare Information System (HIS) of the organization is only linked with Laboratory Information System (LIS). Connecting it with other operating systems would be a step-wise process. Hospital Information Management (HIM) has quite a limited role in the organization in terms of its connectivity with other operating systems such as HIS. It is thus, equally important for me to allow this department to share the number of records under the coding and nomenclature (Amatayakul). III. Virtual Assistance: It has been noted that the installation of EHR in healthcare industry has ultimately led to failures, because the hospital administration and the medical professionals were not able to get along with the newer ways of reporting medical cases. Thus, I would suggest that virtual assistance software is also to be installed on the workstations to provide tutorials to the professionals, so the blame game that had led to the EHR failure can be reduced. Even before selecting an EHR system, hospital must undertake interference with the information system. I would also stress on the point that information systems such as Cisco, Axolotl’s etc. comes with the package of HUB control which allows the main server to save all the records. Medical professionals can easily access the information through domains and work IDs (Amatayakul). IV. Multiple Gateways: There could be a number of gateways that can be provided by EHR for the professionals from different departments in the long run when the implementation of EHR is fully undertaken. It would result in meeting the requirement of data source for different department. This will not be just limited to the national level, but also international level. The data sources can be used by external organizations as per given consents for research and development purpose in the healthcare field. Departments of the organization such as nutrition, surgery and rehabilitation can be referred in this regard. The information of these departments plays greater role in the commutative research in medical field (Amatayakul). v. Increased Consumption of Time for Transformation of Manual to Electronic Case: In order to transfer the manually stored medical cases to the Electronic information system, a great deal of scanning would be required. This will be further requiring setting framework within categories. The transformation of manual work to electronic work will automatically need a lot of connectivity among the department to prove the relevance. But once the information is assured as reliable and accurate, it can be available on the main servers and domains of different departments of the hospital (Amatayakul). The above noted challenges of interoperability within the healthcare organizations are inserted as per their significance. Being an information system chief, I would suggest the managers to make noted of the challenges. The solutions are also provided along with the insertion of challenges which would allow the mangers to understand the need of nomenclature and coding in connecting different departments of the hospital. The EHR acquisition is often marked as failed in most of cases, especially in the healthcare field. Thus, it should be noted that proper EHR vendor selection is done. Conducting virtual interferences is also imperative in this regard. References Amatayakul, M. ( 2004).Health Record and Practicazl Guide for Profesional and Organization. Chicago: AHIMA Read More