Information Technology In Healthcare Industry: Benefits, Risks, And Maintenance

How Information Technology is used in Business

Discuss about the IT in Health Industry.

Information technology has played a crucial role in the modern economy as it has been found to impact quality, security as well as effectiveness to different segments of the economy. The health industry has been affected due to the technological changes, which have taken place over the years (Buntin et al., 2011). The implementation of the information technology in the industry has provided a better approach to the suppliers as well as the patient to get into and the utilization of the data. Each health institution should decide the best information technology to use in order to enhance the quality, effectiveness as well as security in the organization. Providing quality services requires the suppliers and the patients to incorporate the complex data to a wide range of services. An example, of a health sector that information technology has affected is the uniting care Aging Center that has provided health services for decades to individuals in New South Wales and the Australia capital Territory (World Health Organization, 2015). They have implemented electronic clinical system, which has proved to be effective in solving the problems of the customers. They have provided the health care for approximately fourteen thousand individuals to more than eighty-four residential care facilities, retirement villages and over 4000 community care clients and five thousand staff (World Health Organization, 2015). The institution adopted the system as result of the inconsistent and manual process as well as practices that were ineffective. The use of the information technology has enabled different duties to be done more quickly before the deadline.

In every organization that is successful, it has utilized information technology. IT has been found to drive innovative practices and it makes the business to be successful. The sole purpose of every business today is to be innovative through use of information technology. The first aspect of any business that is a startup is figuring on how they could adopt IT the recruiting process. Without presence of information technology, the business will not thrive well in the competitive market place the (Kellermann and Jones, 2013). The Aging Centre they adopted the information technology in order to make their processes to be more efficient and this enabled the workers to complete various tasks before the deadline. The information technology can be used both internally and externally to the business processes. The internal use is through the employees using the system to carry out their duties assigned. The use of the information technology provides a great accountability in regards to both assessments and quality of the health care (Kellermann and Jones, 2013). Additionally, it provides the best practices and models to efficiently deliver the services as comparison to manual practices that were cumbersome.

Significance of Information Technology on Health Industry Survival

The use of IT in an organization is important since it determines its survival in the competitive market place. Businesses can use the information technology in a number of ways such as record keeping, which could be done online, accounting, and payment can be possible through IT (Murdoch and Detsky, 2013). The information technology has helped Aging Centre health care their processes to be efficient and undertake their tasks more efficiently. This has been possible through the implementation of an electronic clinical system. Their process and practices were previously predominately inconsistent and poorly adopted which resulted in provision of unreliable care delivery (Murdoch and Detsky, 2013).

When an organization wants to implement the information technology, it should look at some components such as the cost, the process of planning, design, training of the personnel and the installation of the system. In regards to the cost of the system, the organization should look at the expense-friendly software that does not affect the cash flow or perhaps the resources of the business.  Planning entails looking at the process of implementation, which will provide optimal performance in the business (Blumenthal, 2011). The design requires meeting the specification and all the needs of the health organization they are providing. It should meet the requirements, and the nature of the organization.Lastly, installation should be done in a manner that there is a backup system, which will be essential to monitor as well as protect the data of the client, and there are security practices so that information is not breached. Moreover, the employees need to be trained well on how the system works without compromising the data of the clients (Blumenthal, 2011).

Following are the benefits does IT brings to health industry: –

1. Data Analytics: Usage of data is by implementing different methods in analytics like predictive or types of statistics and different quantitative methods that will help in providing the better level of insight and be able to accomplish better results (Miriovsky et al., 2012).
2. Security: in present time, there are number of regulatory compliances that need a lot of permit like PCI-DS or ISO. There is also some level of reluctance in order to take technology that start by dealing and also adopting in order to achieve some level of traction. It is important to understand that there are so many kind of security that features for protecting the data and also deals with different kind of service providers (Miriovsky et al., 2012).
3. Mobility: a very crucial advantage is definitely mobility where the IT and different software like cloud infrastructure can become a backbone for various medical personnel and the motive to get all kind of data from various locations and with the help of different set of devices (UNICEF, U. and World Health Organization, 2011).

Following type of risks IT brings in Health care: –

1. Physician contracting: healthcare centres and other organisations usually continue to carry on with integration of physicians and the overall arrangement of them are becoming more and more complex and challenging with time and it also brings a significant amount of risk (Rozenblum et al., 2011). Health centres or hospitals usually move in a quick manner from one contract to other as far as physicians are concerned. However it is very difficult for every kind of party to test the contracts with different kind of physicians before actually finalising one.
2. Joint ventures: These kinds of ventures continue to develop in an extraordinary manner in this industry and it enters in different way and covers all kind of aspects. Moreover, in order to manage the differences in culture between a NGO and a normal businesses, that the parties should deal with the risk associated with the compliance with ethical needs as well as legal needs (Rozenblum et al., 2011).

Following are the ways in which business can maintain and monitor IT in healthcare industry: –

1. There is a program called inventory management which is used to keep a tab of the stock that is regularly coming in and at the same time going out as well. The benefit of this system is that an organisation has a digital kind of inventory system that is huge. It also permits one to capture every kind of information about the stock or inventory in real time (Lluch., 2011). Therefore, it is important for the healthcare industry is to consider the inventory systems in the organisations since these kinds of application will help to track each and every item at any place.
2. To make sure that fulfilling the orders for every new stock, an organization must request to access the inventory data of the distributors. This will help the hospital to coordinate every purchase and orders correctly. At the same time, it can avoid being placed on any waitlist (Lluch., 2011).
3. It is also important for any healthcare company to implement a tracking system that can help in monitoring the inventory system. Many organizations can also use a different kind of tools to make sure that the data is free from any error and at the same time also consistent with nature (Kongstvedt, 2012).

Conclusion

IT has the capacity to give a lot of opportunities in order to promote correct kind of practices. It not only helps in preventing some specific diseases, give data for maintaining the health and provide other information which is required. IT gives a lot of benefits and also removes the requirement of huge number of manual labour (Kongstvedt, 2012). At the same time, with increased usage, there are certain issues, duties and precautions also that is needed to be applied while using IT.

Reference

Buntin, M.B., Burke, M.F., Hoaglin, M.C. and Blumenthal, D., 2011. The benefits of health information technology: a review of the recent literature shows predominantly positive results. Health affairs, 30(3), pp.464-471.

World Health Organization, 2015. Consolidated strategic information guidelines for HIV in the health sector.

Kellermann, A.L. and Jones, S.S., 2013. What it will take to achieve the as-yet-unfulfilled promises of health information technology. Health Affairs, 32(1), pp.63-68.

Murdoch, T.B. and Detsky, A.S., 2013. The inevitable application of big data to health care. Jama, 309(13), pp.1351-1352.

Blumenthal, D., 2011. Implementation of the federal health information technology initiative. New England Journal of Medicine, 365(25), pp.2426-2431.

Miriovsky, B.J., Shulman, L.N. and Abernethy, A.P., 2012. Importance of health information technology, electronic health records, and continuously aggregating data to comparative effectiveness research and learning health care. Journal of Clinical Oncology, 30(34), pp.4243-4248.

UNICEF, U. and World Health Organization, 2011. Global HIV/AIDS response: epidemic update and health sector progress towards universal access: progress report 2011. World Health Organization.

Rozenblum, R., Jang, Y., Zimlichman, E., Salzberg, C., Tamblyn, M., Buckeridge, D., Forster, A., Bates, D.W. and Tamblyn, R., 2011. A qualitative study of Canada’s experience with the implementation of electronic health information technology. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 183(5), pp.E281-E288.

Lluch, M., 2011. Healthcare professionals’ organisational barriers to health information technologies—A literature review. International journal of medical informatics, 80(12), pp.849-862.

Kongstvedt, P.R., 2012. Essentials of managed health care. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.