Information Technology in the Health Sector - Coursework Example

Information Technology in the Health Sector Affiliation Introduction Integrated health system also known as integrated care is a universal style in health care improvements and new structural arrangements in organizations concentrating on additional coordinated and closely related procedures of care facility. Integrated care is a response to the largely divided distribution of health and communal facilities, this being a common difficult in numerous health systems. Integrated care deals with a comprehensively complex field. The integration is a show of improved facilities in respect to access, user satisfaction quality and efficiency. The idea of integrated care is particularly essential to facility delivery to the aging. This is so because elderly patients are vulnerable to chronicle illnesses and focuses to co-morbidities. This puts them in superior need of constant care. The Information Management Principles Information management (IM) can be defined as the collection and management of relevant information from one or more sources and the distribution of such information to one or more audiences. This often involves those with interests or a right to that information. Management is the organization of and control over the structure, processing and delivery of information (Anitav, Riley & Ahituv, 1994) Information management is a collective corporate responsibility and needs to be addressed and attended to from the upper most senior levels of management to the front line worker. Organizations and its employees must be accountable to collect, manage, process, store and deliver information appropriately and responsibly. Part of this responsibility is achievable through training the organization to become conversant with the policies and processes related to technologies and the best practices in Information Management The principles that guide an effective information management system are: 1. Recognize (and manage) complexity Identify the complex components around your system and accord them enough attention. It requires a strong objective leadership to set a clear direction, for sustainable improvements. 2. Focus on adoption Every systems must have users. The projects should be carefully structured to focus on user adoption right from the start. There should be enough people using the systems to make them valuable. 3. Deliver tangible & visible benefits For the users to notice the improvements in information management they should be provided with timely, reliable, and accurate operational management information. 4. Prioritize according to business needs The planning process should be based on the ability to address business needs. The overall technology strategy is not to be undermined, but greater focus is on providing measureable business benefits. 5. Take a journey of a thousand steps Do not burry yourself in creating a perfect plan. This could prove a very complex problem. Big improvements are achievable by implementing many small coordinated changes across the company. 6. Provide strong leadership A decision is to be made on how the business will operate, including the information needed. As this vision is developed it also should be clearly communicated. 7. Mitigate risks Good risk management measures should be applied to ensure success. Risks ought to be identified and approaches defined to minimize their potential impact. 8. Communicate extensively Everyone should be in the know about the business direction and desired outcomes. Continuous reminders of this should be made. This way each business unit can make the best decisions to support the goal. 9. Aim to deliver a seamless user experience The system should enable the users to access all the information they desire with ease. The aim is for the users to access whatever they need from one place. 10. Choose the first project very carefully The first project is vital to prove the value of information management. Manageable project should be selected; projects with visible benefits in an area of the business and where everyone has an interest. Storage of Health Care data 1. Tips for storing patient data and medical images There are several data storage options available to healthcare facilities. These include tiered storage, SAN-attached storage or storage area network. The picture archiving and communication system (PACS) is commonly used for storing medical images (Haux at el, 2002) The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires healthcare organizations to have a contingency plan in case of lost data. Many organizations keep HIPAA in mind when considering storage options Effects of IT on health care The paternalistic era of medicine is over. Information technology has made new models plausibly possible. The Internet has the capacity to personalize and customize healthcare if managed carefully. With information technology in the health service provision sector, three areas mostly affected are the costs of service delivery, quality of services provided and the ease of acces to the services (Safran at el, 2007). Cost The use of the Internet in health services provision can decrease costs substantially by streamlining and conforming office administrative processes of plans and providers. For instance, if patients could communicate with physicians or be monitored through the internet, more than 20% of in-office visits could be eliminated. Tremendous savings can also be generated by more efficient identification and allocation of resources to high risk patients, care services delivery in lower cost settings, and reduction or better, elimination of the waste associated with medical errors. All this is possible if we effectively utilize information technology. Quality Information technology tools can also impact quality largely through electronic operations that measure, analyze, and associate accountability to various medical procedures. IT has enabled new payment schemes structured to reward on an output-based model, that is, physician performance and created financial incentives for improving the quality of care for patients with chronic disease. We will diverge from common points of experts and literature review towards Internet-based decision support systems. With easily available information, individual practitioners and the entire organizations will know how their care needs change with time and will be able to learn from others in real time. Sophisticated disease management tools available will provide the means to improve quality of life while reducing or eliminating future costs. Informatics and artificial intelligence when adopted will dramatically decrease the cost of medical errors and improve patient safety. This is so because medical accidents will have been eliminated. Access The use of medical technologies conjoined, like telemedicine, and the Internet can also have a very positive effect on access. The electronic rendering of health information and services is especially significant for rural hospitals that use it to receive consulting services from large teaching hospitals or to monitor patients in homes Legal and Ethical Issues related to IT and Healthcare Every decision that is made in the health sector has ethical implications, for patients, providers and for healthcare leaders (Rodrigues, 2000). The effects include though not limited to 1. Balancing the care quality and efficiency 2. Improving access to healthcare quality 3. Building and sustaining a reputable healthcare workforce 4. Addressing issues that are likely to prevail for long 5. Allocating limited medications and donor organs Roles of health care administrator The medical record maintenances, either paper-based or electronically operated, is a communication tool that supports clinical decision making, evaluation of the quality and efficacy of care, coordination of services, research and education and legal protection through accreditation and regulatory processes. It is the record of the health care system, normally documented in the daily operations of its activities (Kongstvedt, 2012). Emerging Information Technologies Telehealth is the usage of electric info and broadcastings system to sustenance of long-distance medical health care, interlink patient and professional health-related teaching, public health and administration. These technologies include store-and-forward imaging, videoconferencing, the internet, issuing media, and global and wireless communications. References Anitav, N., Riley, H. N., & Ahituv, N. (1994). Principles of information systems for management. Business & Educational Technologies. Haux, R., Ammenwerth, E., Herzog, W., & Knaup, P. (2002). Health care in the information society. A prognosis for the year 2013. International Journal of Medical Informatics, 66(1), 3-21. Safran, C., Bloomrosen, M., Hammond, W. E., Labkoff, S., Markel-Fox, S., Tang, P. C., & Detmer, D. E. (2007). Toward a national framework for the secondary use of health data: an American Medical Informatics Association White Paper. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 14(1), 1-9. Rodrigues, R. J. (2000). Ethical and legal issues in interactive health communications: a call for international cooperation. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2(1), e8. Kongstvedt, P. R. (2012). Essentials of managed health care. Jones & Bartlett Publishers. Read More