Healthcare informatics research and innovation

Healthcare informatics research and innovation

Health informatics refers to the connection of information technology together with design as well as the delivery of health-care services. As we advance daily new technologies are vital so as to move with the current trends. This is not an exception when it comes to the health-care system. The continuous use of health information technology has proved to improve the effectiveness and quality of health care services. The thesis statement of this paper is to show some of the emerging technologies in the health care system and their usefulness in the system. Basically, in this research paper, I will refer to two major health care technology services that are mostly used interchangeably. That is the Electronic Health Record (EHR) and the Electronic Medical Record (EMR). Below are the findings:

The EHR refers to a modern version of a patient chart that is designed to follow them from one specialist or practice to the other, throughout their lives. The records show the patient’s vaccinations, symptoms, prescriptions, and treatments. The EHR focuses mostly on the entire health of the patient. It goes beyond the basic patient’s data collected to provide a broader view of the patient’s care. The records are designed in such a way as to reach out above the health organization that initially compiled and collected the information.

The EHR can be used by other people apart from the hospital. The hospital gives the records to trusted people like the family as well as the patient himself. They also share this information with other specialists and laboratories and also other health-care providers. This means that the information is not only restricted to being used by one hospital alone, but it also goes beyond that and thus makes it easier for the patient to receive proper treatment. This is an advantage on the side of the patient since it makes it easy for them to go through the process of diagnosis because the doctors already have prior knowledge (Ramona Nelson, 2017).

Once these records have been shared, they help the health caregivers to compare the differences between the record types, and thus a more advanced type of treatment is given. Health care is a team effort in that one hospital cannot be able to deal with a patient on some health problems adequately, and this is why we have referral hospitals. Shared information, therefore, supports this effort. Below are benefits of the EHRs:

• The information given by the main health-care provider helps the clinician from the emergency department to know the patient’s serious allergy issues, thereby making them appropriately, even in the case where the patient is unconscious.
• A patient can access his records by login in and therefore be able to look at the trend of the outcomes of the previous year. This motivates him to take his medications as well as to maintain the lifestyle changes as directed by the doctor.
• The laboratory outcomes give the specialist an easy time since they can access the previous weeks’ results. This saves them the stress of running multiple tests.
• The notes given by the clinician greatly helps the patient during their discharge since they have explicit instructions to follow. They also help them in follow-ups as well as a smooth transition from one hospital to another.
• The EHR carries the future of the patient since they provide all the previous information about this patient. This informs the decisions of the next caregivers, thus making sure that no same mistakes are repeated.
• EHRs help policymakers in the health sector. This is because they are able to trace the illnesses of the same kind that they have handled in previous years (Health.IT.gov, 2017).

An EMR, on the other hand, refers to everything that is found on the paper chart ranging from diagnoses, allergies, medications, immunization dates, among others. The biggest difference between ERMs and EHRs is that ERMs are not allowed to move outside the hospital premises. As much as both talk about the description of the patient’s illness, ERM is narrower than EHR. The patients are not allowed to move around with the ERMs. This forces them through the stress of having to ask the former health care provider to print a copy for the next provider so that they go through.

Despite that, ERMs also have their own benefits. These include:

• Clinicians are given an opportunity to be able to track data over-time. This is because they always have this information with them if at all, they have treated that patient in the past.
• Clinicians are also able to identify with ease the patients that require preventive checkups or screenings. This helps them to avoid making major treatment problems that might put the life of the patient in danger.
• Health-care givers are also able to assess how a certain patient is doing on different parameters like vaccinations or blood pressure rates or readings.
• Clinicians are also able to monitor the general health of the patient, thereby improving where necessary. This ensures that the patients receive the best treatment.

From the research, I found out that these electronic records help lessens the workload of the whole treatment system, thus making it more efficient and easy at the same time. It should be noted that as much as the patients do not move around with the EMRs, they can easily get them upon request.

These records can be a bit expensive during initial implementation because the health providers have to invest in proper training, hardwares, and enough software support. If they are not well built, also a system malfunction can erase all the available data. However, these challenges cannot outdo the many health challenges we have discussed above. The main goal of these systems is to provide an easy and modern approach in the health care systems. As the world is advancing, the health sector should also be advancing and making it easier for patients to be treated well.

From the findings, I noted that the health-care information is not only useful through electronic records. There are many other modern technologies that have helped to shape the health sector to become better and efficient every day. Below are the benefits of the entire information technology at large:

• Dramatic savings – studies have shown that most of the hospital expenses are used in repeated procedures, traditional ways of sharing information, errors, and delays in care, among other reasons. Information technology helps to solve these problems by providing better and advanced methods of approaching the whole treatment process. It also helps to quicken the treatment process. Health informatics also reduces errors, increases efficiency and communication, thereby reducing the costly incompetence.
• Promote shared knowledge – the reason as to why medicine is called practice is because they help the care providers to continue sharpening their skills through shared knowledge. Health informatics gives knowledge about diseases, patients, medicines, therapies, among other issues related to a patient’s treatment. As this knowledge is passed, everybody, including the patients, tends to learn something new.
• Patient participation – once a patient is given access to their health recommendations history, they get empowered to take up the role of their entire welfare more seriously. Patients also get an opportunity of educating themselves through the information provided on their diagnosis while maintaining a good track of symptoms and medications. They also get a chance to interact with the nurses and doctors with much ease, thus making the process yield better results.
• Increased coordination – as health-care is getting more specialized, patients get the opportunity of receiving care from diverse people in their stay in the hospital for that time. This, in turn, increases the caregiver’s coordination. It is the health informatics that makes this coordination possible.
• Improved outcomes – electronic results lead to better health care. They result in high quality and safer health care with minimum cases of error. Nurses and doctors are able to free more time, which they spend with their patients in turn.

In conclusion, from my research, I found out that every hospital should try all they can to switch from the old way of treatments to the information technology that is at hand. The health informatics ensures that there is better and efficient health-care. This impacts not only the patients but also the individual hospitals and the whole health sector in a very positive way, as we have seen above.