IT In Business Of Health Information Technology – Use, Advantages And Risks

Use of IT tools in internal organizational activities

Discuss about the IT in Business of Health Information Technology.

At present, the success factors of business are dependent on accurate analysis, selection of proper technology and future vision. Research works in this area have proved that the business organization has invested in technology can have a better market share, financial figures and overall competitiveness in their business operations (Minor et al. 2015). Only information technology can provide the tools for handling all types of business operations. The complicated situation of the business operations can be easily sorted out by the use of innovative IT tools. In this report, the different types of use of the IT technologies in the actual business cases of health care organizations have been analyzed (Schumaker 2014). The way of using the IT tools in the internal and external operations in the health care organizations; the advantages and the risk associated with the tools have been discussed in this report.

Use of IT tools in internal organizational activities:

The internal activities of the health care organization such as Staff handling, planning, designing, equipment installation can be efficiently handled by the use of the IT tools (Devin and O’Clock 2015). The interpersonal communication is a vital fact for the effective handling of the operations of the health and social care organizations. The ICT tools are useful for communicating with the co-workers within the health care organization. The patient details have to be maintained carefully in the health care organizations. The manual handling of these data is very critical. In this context, the ICT tools are required for storing and maintaining these data. The computerized systems of the health care organizations can store the data regarding the patient details and the medications schedules of the patients for providing the effective level of services to the patients (Godbole and Lamb 2013). The ICT tools of the health care sector include the software tools such as spreadsheet, word processor, PowerPoint, analyzing data database, monitor etc. These facilities are used for the clinical handover within the health care organizations. Appointments with the doctors and the reports are also can be handled by the ICT tools. These are helpful for providing the treatment and care facilities to the patients in the most effective manner. The ICT tools are necessary for the marinating the daily schedules of the employees. Who are responsible for which section of health care organizations can be properly maintained by the use of the ICT tools available in the software packages of the health care organization (Thomas 2014). Another important internal activity of the health care organizations is to maintain the financial documents of the patients and employees. The ICT tools should have the spreadsheet software tools which can efficiently calculate the financial data of the organizations and store those properly. The equipment required for the different types of treatment and care related activities are vital to be stored and maintain properly. The availability of the equipment should be maintained by the ICT tools of the health care organizations. This will help to avail the right equipment at the right time. There is another vital internal activity of the health care organizations which is the training to the employees. The employees working in different types of the posts in the health care organizations have to be properly trained regarding their responsibilities in the respective positions (Chan et al. 2013). The training can be efficiently done by using the ICT tools. Training through the visual aids of the ICT tools is the most effective way to train the employees.

Use of IT tools in external organizational activities

Use of IT tools in external organizational activities:

At the present age, it has been proved that the digital marketing is very important to get the competitive advantages. The non-government business organizations are competing with the other business organizations. They have to achieve the sustainable competitive advantages to getting the desired level of success in their business operations. In this context, the health care organizations should deliver the most effective services to the patient and patient parties. The patient parties should get proper information about the medications and treatment of the patients. The ICT tools of the health care organizations are able to provide proper information to the patient parties (Bardhan and Thouin 2013). In the case of manual handling of the information, the health care professionals would not be able to provide proper information. As a result, the patient parties may not be able to take proper care of the patients after realizing from the hospital. This is an important external operation of the health care organizations to provide excellent customer service and gain higher profit.

Advantages:

Reducing Paperwork:

The clipboard and new patient questionnaire will remain for some time as an important part of doctor’s office (Kellermann and Jones 2013). However, through IT, it becomes easier to add more information in the HER. Therefore, the doctors and other health care personnel will be able to have more data,

Improved care and safety:

Sometimes one patient is monitored and prescribed by more than one doctors. On that case, the chances are high that those three doctors will prescribe different drugs for the patients. In that case, it is also possible that those drugs would interact harmfully after mixing with each other (Agha 2014). In this situation, IT tool such as HER will warn the care providers and alert the doctors about it.

Reducing unnecessary tests and procedures

Sometimes, doctors have to order the same test that a patient experienced few months ago as the previous result is no more available. Those tests might have been uncomfortable and inconvenient or may include some risk (Magrabi et al. 2013). Besides, these tests are normally highly cost effective. With HER, all the care providers will have the access to all the test results of the patients.

Risk from Web application

Physician portals are used in health care organization several times in a day for gathering results related to laboratory and radiology, complete charts and access electronic medical records. On the other hand, patient portals are also accessed to get information about patient’s billing, test results, prescribed medicines and schedules appointments (Kellermann and Jones 2013). If these web applications are not coded securely, the chances are high that cross-site scripting and SQL injections could be subjugated by any unauthorized user via the internet which will conciliation the privacy of sensitive information.

Advantages

Maintenance: In order to maintain the web services and to keep it risk-free Hewlett Packard’s Wen Inspect scanner, IBM’s Watchfire App Scan, and Acunetix’s Web Vulnerability Scanners can be used in health care centers (Wamba et al. 2013).

Network Infrastructure General Control risk

In any health care institute, instruments such as monitors, IV pumps and radiology accessories stay allied to organization’s IT network. These instruments are mostly run on viable, off-the-shelf in service systems and should be attached to guard them against malevolent software and any illegal access (Agha 2014). Besides, the clinical engineering department rather than the IT department use these applications. Therefore, the chances are high that due to lack of knowledge those clinical engineering personnel might misuse the devices and invite any unwanted threat to the system.   

Maintenance:

In order to reduce the risks related to medical devices that are connected to the network, the auditors might perform a catalog that will indicate the type of device being reviewed, names of the person (Agha 2014). They were managing the application, maintenance history and location and IP address of the tool and whether MDS2 form was collected from the manufacturer or not.

Wireless network

Most of the upgraded clinical systems are developed in a way that it will use wireless networks to detain and present information at the point-of-care such as patient bedside. This the reason that hospitals are implementing to include wireless network infrastructure in the workplaces. According to Thakur (2012), wireless networks are not secured and could be used as an initiation point for an assault on the hospital’s interior systems.

More than a few open source and marketable wireless scanners such as NetStumbler, Kismet and AirMagnet are available that can assist the auditors to understand whether a health care organization’s wireless communications is configured based on the policies and events or not (Devine and O’Clock 2015).

Conclusion:

The implementation of information technology plays a major role in the health care industry by enhancing the procedures related to health care and nursing. Information technology not only helps to improve and fasten the performance of a health care organization but also helps to provide better and accurate solutions by evaluating what has been done in the past and what is needed for the future. However, it is seen that, with the blessing, information technology also brings issues ad challenges that can affect the confidential data of the health care center. Besides, if the security systems are not up to the mark, then unauthorized users also can collect sensitive information of the patients in the first place. Therefore, implementing an information system is not the end; however, it is just be beginning as it must be maintained and monitored with extreme care to save it from external threats and attacks.

References:

Agha, L., 2014. The effects of health information technology on the costs and quality of medical care. Journal of health economics, 34, pp.19-30.

Bardhan, I.R. and Thouin, M.F., 2013. Health information technology and its impact on the quality and cost of healthcare delivery. Decision Support Systems, 55(2), pp.438-449.

Chan, H.L., Choi, T.M., Hui, C.L. and Ng, S.F., 2013, March. The Use of Information for Inventory Decision in the Healthcare Industry. In Proceedings of World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology (No. 75, p. 183). World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology (WASET).

Devine, K. and O’Clock, P., 2015. An Analysis of the Benefits of Technology Implementation in the Healthcare Industry. Journal of Health Care Finance,41(3).

Godbole, N.S. and Lamb, J., 2013, October. The triple challenge for the healthcare industry: sustainability, privacy, and cloud-centric regulatory compliance. In Emerging Technologies for a Smarter World (CEWIT), 2013 10th International Conference and Expo on (pp. 1-6). IEEE.

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.

Magrabi, F., Aarts, J., Nohr, C., Baker, M., Harrison, S., Pelayo, S., Talmon, J., Sittig, D.F. and Coiera, E., 2013. A comparative review of patient safety initiatives for national health information technology. International journal of medical informatics, 82(5), pp.e139-e148.

Minor-Cooley, D.O., Bush, A. and Madupu, V., 2015. How Consumers are Searching: The Importance of the Internet to the Healthcare Industry. InProceedings of the 2008 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 176-176). Springer International Publishing.

Schumaker, R.P. and Reganti, K.P., 2014. Implementation of Electronic Health Record (EHR) System in the Healthcare Industry. International Journal of Privacy and Health Information Management (IJPHIM), 2(2), pp.57-71.

Thakur, R., Hsu, S.H. and Fontenot, G., 2012. Innovation in healthcare: Issues and future trends. Journal of Business Research, 65(4), pp.562-569.

Wamba, S.F., Anand, A. and Carter, L., 2013. A literature review of RFID-enabled healthcare applications and issues. International Journal of Information Management, 33(5), pp.875-891.