Nature of Health Information - Essay Example

Information access is vital in providing adequate medical care. Understanding what kind of information and methods of communication work best for specific health care providers (HCPs) is vital in determining optimal information exchange and subsequent medical care. In the study of McKnight et al. (2002), they surveyed 26 physicians and 17 nurses for this purpose. According to the data of McKnight et al. (2002), physicians seem to have a more advanced information needs, in that they generally want a complex network to integrate databases.

Patient-specific needs such as a centralized list of current HCPs per patient, institution-specific needs such as a means of telling if these HCPs are on call, and domain-specific needs such as disease management with prescribing information are just some of the needs of physicians. For nurses, on the other hand, they have simpler information needs than the physicians. In patient-specific information, availability of patient diagnoses and laboratory results are needed. Institution-specific needs such as policies, protocols and census reports are also listed.

Finally, domain-specific needs, specifically drug information, diagnoses definitions, and educational materials, are indicated. In addition, nurses tend to depend more on domain-specific information such as online textbook guidelines and decisions aids than do physicians. Despite these differences, the glaring similarity is that they both want to be able to communicate and share information with other HCPs (Coiera, 2000). A central list of current of current HCPs per patient demands the input from the HCPs themselves.

Providing their concise qualifications and credentials, as well as their contact details, may help in the use of these data for knowing which HCPs to consult when certain medical conditions of a patient arises. However, these data should be processed such as they are well-organized, regularly updated, and easily accessible. HCPs should be compelled to update their contact details when changes come up. An online database is thus needed that can accept input from and provide information to different HCPs (Stetson et al., 2001). By using the internet as the host of this database, it can be made available to all hospitals, so that when patients are transferred then communication among appropriate HCPs can take place quickly.

The information about the state-of-the-art protocols should also be provided to HCPs. This means input and supporting evidence from medical researchers should be provided. When collated into a database, these will provide HCPs options on the best treatment for a specific option. However, as noted in the study by McKnight et al. (2002), not all HCPs are adept in digging into the depths of a database to look into such information. It is thus suggested by this writer that all HCPs should be compelled a certain number of conferences discussing these updated protocols, so that if not experts in the usage, at least they are aware that such new protocols are available.

In the event that they would need these protocols, they are already available in databases. Finally, in providing information on disease management, similar to the first specific information need discussed in this paper, needs input from HCPs. However, it demands a much more complicated input from HCPs, as they probably need to give case reports on their patients. As always, organized compilation of these reports is needed to process all data. It should also be accessible from all HCPs. The output from this is accurate, more HCP-useful medical history for the patients.

Better use of these data can be utilized if there are predetermined set of questions provided to HCPs so that all the necessary information, as deemed by a board of HCPs, are provided for all patients. Full-blown case reports may be tasking for HCPs to do. In addition, the standardization of data is vital in the quick response on the medical conditions of the patients. References Coiera, E. 2000. When Coversation Is Better Than Computation. JAMIA, 7(3), 277-286. McKnight, L. K., Stetson, P. D.

Bakken, S., & Curran, C. (2002). Perceived Information Needs and Communication Difficulties of Inpatient Physicians and Nurses. JAMIA, 9, S64–S69. Stetson, P. D., McKnight, L. K., Bakken, S., Curran, C., Kubose T. T. & Cimino, J. J. (2001).Proceedings from AMIA 2001 Fall Symposium: Development of an Ontology to Model Medical Errors, Information Needs, and the Clinical Communication Space.