health industry is less proactive in the usage of IT

health industry is less proactive in the usage of IT

QUESTION ONE

The health industry is less proactive in the usage of IT for the following reasons:

• Other industries, for instance, banking, needs universal standards for data exchange; however, the health care industry does not.
• In other industries, the usage of IT is considered to be a competitive edge for a particular organization when compared to its competitors. Whereas in the case of healthcare, the competitive advantage comes based on the quality of service and treatment provided to its patients & hence IT is not considered that necessary.
• In other industries, professionals who are qualified in computer science take care of the IT operations, for example, software companies, whereas in the case of healthcare industries only administration makes use of IT which requires specialized training to be provided to them that can be an additional expense for the hospital.
• There is not much requirement for IT in healthcare organizations when we compare with other types of organizations

This perception can be changed by automating many processes like patients’ records and pharmacies inside the hospital.

QUESTION TWO

EDI is the most commonly used B2B eCommerce technology today. This is a computer to computer exchange of business documents such as purchase orders, invoices in a standard electronic format. In contrast, EDI and e-health are related in such a way that EDI provides a standard for exchanging data in electronic means. For example, we can consider the two companies like DrChrono and Emdeon can exchange electronic documents like medical claims.

E-commerce assists the healthcare industry with its reengineering effort, which combines business and electronic infrastructures that allow business transactions to be conducted electronically between different health care organizations ignoring the geographic boundaries separating them. There are two types of eCommerce infrastructures; Web-based and EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). Considering EDI relation with the health industry, it involves an exchange of information among vendors, hospitals, insurance agencies, state and federal regulators, and doctors’ offices without the end clients (patients) being directly involved.

QUESTION THREE

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) require computers and are driving the increased use of computerized care protocols in healthcare. Excess information in complex ICU environments exceeds human decision-making limits, increasing the likelihood of clinical errors. Explicit decision-support tools have favorable effects on clinician and patient outcomes and can reduce the variation in clinical practice that persists even when guidelines based on reputable evidence are available. Computerized protocols are used for complex clinical problems that can generate at the point of care, patient-specific evidence-based therapy instructions that can be carried by different clinicians with no inter clinician variability. They contain textual guidelines or paper-based flow diagrams.

QUESTION FOUR

The benefit of PKI is that it can verify the identity of the other party over the network and can also verify the authenticity of the data. These are the reasons that it is getting increased attention in the healthcare industry because it is necessary to protect the privacy of the information of a particular patient seven similarly the data provided by the patients can also be verified at the time of their admission & for further processes. A public key infrastructure allows those who use an insecure public network such as the Internet to securely and privately exchange data and money through the use of a public and a private cryptographic key that is obtained and shared through a trusted authority (Search Security 2011). The PKI is receiving so much attention within the healthcare industry because it will allow the implementation of the National-wide Health Information Network (NHIN) without compromising the privacy and confidentiality of the patients. With PKI, physicians and hospitals will be able to access a patient’s complete medical history via the Internet but will be able to do so securely and privately.

QUESTION FIVE

To ensure a better quality of care and value for money., billions of dollars are spent in bettering information systems in healthcare organizations. In this way, strategic information system planning is instrumental in making informed decisions to achieve the goals & objectives of healthcare organizations. Strategic planning for information systems is crucial because it provides a sequence of direction and outlines measurable goals. It is a tool for guiding day-to-day decisions as well as for evaluating progress and changing approaches when an organization is moving forward. Among the risks associated with lack of IS plan are; confusion among employees, the complacency of stakeholders, short-term thinking, lack of unity, deeply entrenched traditional perspectives and leadership indifferences

QUESTION SIX

Strategic information systems (SIS) are information systems that are developed in response to the corporate business initiative. They are intended to give a competitive advantage to the organization. The systems development life cycle (SDLC), also referred to as the application development life-cycle, is a term used in systems engineering, information systems, and software engineering to describe a process for planning, creating, testing, and deploying an information system. The relationship between the two is that the strategic information system specifies one particular dimension that is the decisive edge that the system is going to facilitate. The system development life cycle is the generic life cycle of system development.

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