Patient access, data mining and PHI - Essay Example

Patient Access, Data Mining and PHI Patient Access, Data Mining and PHI Health information technology is one of the best initiatives to improve quality and efficiency in the healthcare system. However, its implementation faces some problems with patients and physicians. The goal of implementing the new system was to minimize errors to provide quality services and to address the fragmentation of medical care. The physicians face the problem through the system being complex and cost a lot to implement.

The cost may include enabling old facilities to have the wireless networks. Another problem is the encryption of the data and security of the patients’ data in the system. However, the primary concern about the system is its ability to support use by people at different levels including patients without compromising the confidentiality of the patients’ data. Interoperability in the IT system also forms the primary concern in the success of the health information technology in US.Interoperability is the ability of the systems and devices to share information and interpret the shared information.

There is a need to agree on system standards for them to be interoperable at any level (Melvin, 2009). Health IT vendors in US use system that are not interoperable. One of the causes of interoperability problem is databases being unable to share the information with different types of applications (Vidyarthi, 2012). The system used by health IT vendor is in a proprietary format limiting access and transfer of information between the various providers. The model used in the systems is not standard, and they use different coded languages making it hard to share the needed health information.

Even when there is sharing of information, terminologies used may be incompatible with applications used. The systems inability to share information effectively makes it very hard to address medical care fragmentation and solve error issues arising due to lack of necessary information.ReferencesMelvin, C. (2009). Health Information Technology: Federal Agencies Experiences Demonstrate Challenges to Successful Implementation: Congressional Testimony. Collingdale: DIANE PublishingVidyarthi, D. P. (2012). Technologies and protocols for the future of Internet design: Reinventing the Web.

Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.