Information Technology in Public Health - Essay Example

"Information Technology in Public Health" is a great example of a paper on the health system. The use of technology in healthcare management has gained very much adoption in the recent past. This arose out of the realization that technology could indeed simplify some of the previously manual systems that made healthcare one of the greatest challenges in the world. The use of computerized systems in the healthcare system has been a solution in the Hospital Acquired Infections (HAIs) replacing the traditional manual surveillance system that made analysis and reporting very cumbersome.

The adoption of computerized surveillance for HAIs made it possible to identify more infections and simplified the analysis and dissemination of the data surveyed (Meek, 2008). The surveillance of HAIs is the basis for the control and the prevention of infections. The identification of the HAIs requires very timely information so that the organisms are detected as soon as possible. The old system relied on positive alerts which were normally generated by preliminary culture results. The prevention of infections requires very functional components which the new analysis and verification made possible with the new relational database (Gastmier, 2002).

Computerized surveillance has enabled control and infection programs in both large and small hospitals where daily hospital-wide surveillance is conducted (Wright, 8009). Moreover, the sharing of infection data across the hospitals on a timely basis has seen to reduce infection rates thereby reduce costs. The computerized system provides the reporting needs of the IPs in addition to the data analysis and surveillance. The system has always survived over the years basically because it consumes less time and replaces the errors in the traditional surveillance system.

In addition, the system allows the users to constantly update it so that its efficiency is always ensured. Critics normally argue that the computerized system is very expensive on the account of the requirements it deserves.