Analyzing an Article with regard to Domain III

The article “The impact of health information technology on patient safety,” written by Yasser Alotaibi and Frank Federico, presents a review of various health information technologies and how they are improving patient safety results. The article is published by the Saudi Medical Journal and is available on the PubMed Central journal archive. The authors conclude by agreeing health information technology is indeed greatly assisting in improving the safety of patients in different ways including, minimizing medication errors, minimizing adverse drug impacts as well as improvising compliance to policies and practices.

As mentioned, the article covers an analysis of various technologies in the medical field spanning from computerized physician order entry (CPOE) to patient data management systems (PDMS) (Yasser K. Alotaibi, 2017). Therefore with regard to Domain III, the reading is overall a review of a range of tasks under the domain. One of the notable technologies reviews on the article that relates to the aforementioned domain is clinical decision support.

Federico and Alotaibi refer to clinical decision support as different tools that assist in improving clinical workflow and decision-making.  These tools provide health care professionals with patient-tailored information that is rationally filtered and made available to the practitioners at the right time. A range of tools fall under clinical decision support such as reminders, alerts, and notifications to both patients and health providers, documentation templates as well as condition-specific order sets (Romano & Stafford,2011). According to a Cochrane systematic review, using on-screen reminders for practitioners led to the improvement in laboratory ordering, process adherence, vaccination as well as clinical results.

5.1

One of the interesting acquisition programs under the GSA website is the information technology (IT) category, involving IT products & services. The category entails the federal government’s offering of technology contracts encompassing an entire suite of IT and telecommunications services, products, and solutions from professional partners in the industry (U.S. General Service Administration, 2020).  GSA’s pre-competed contracts allow the quicker acquisition, adherence to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), and minimum costs that assist in saving money.

Information systems form a key part of a corporation’s assets in terms of the benefits they bring as well as their costly tag. Organizations hence ought to carry out long term plans when acquiring IT products and solutions that will enhance their operational initiatives. At the same time, corporations need to be responsive to developing opportunities. With regard to long-term corporate plans as well as the specific needs of different individuals, important applications are identified, and project priorities are established (Kushniruk et al. 2010). After identifying the requirements of a unique information system, the system is then acquired. The acquisition is generally made on the basis of the running information system framework of the corporation.

Acquiring IT systems can involve third party vendors or in-house modifications and developments. With the high sophistication of today’s IT industry, most corporations result in external sourcing for information systems acquisitions. The key task for specialized vendors is enhancing applications to suit the corporations’ needs and integrating the applications to develop a coherent systems framework.

References

Kushniruk, A., Beuscart-Zéphir, M. C., Grzes, A., Borycki, E., Watbled, L., & Kannry, J. (2010). Increasing the safety of healthcare information systems through improved procurement: toward a framework for selection of safe healthcare systems.

Romano, M. J., & Stafford, R. S. (2011). Electronic health records and clinical decision support systems: impact on national ambulatory care quality. Archives of internal medicine, 171(10), 897-903.

U.S. General Service Administration. (2020, February 18). Information Technology Category. Retrieved from GSA: https://www.gsa.gov/

Yasser K. Alotaibi, S. A. (2017). The impact of health information technology on patient safety. Saudi Medical Journal, 1173-1180.