Health Information System or Health It for Business

Question: Discuss about the Health Information System or Health It for Business. Answer: Introduction: The process of utilizing an array of technologies for sharing, storing and analyzing healthcare related information refers to the term Health Information System or health IT. The study includes various aspects and concerns of Health Information System. In addition, it suggests to uses some new technologies as well as existing technologies in a new way. The healthcare organizations utilize HIT or health information technology for improving patient care. Not only the healthcare organizations can make use of the health IT but also the patients can use HIS for contacting doctors and making an appointment with them (Gaspar et al., 2013). Need of IT in Health Care: At present world, the need of information technology is very crucial. As the number of patients have increased in last decade and continuously increasing it is a headache to manually handle all the information. In addition, through information technology the healthcare organizations can provide more care to the patients. Because of the new live video service, the patients do not need to visit the doctors anymore (Piho et al., 2014). Mobile applications can be used for setting appointment between doctor and patient. This way the patient satisfaction will be increasing day by day. The information systems are also very powerful to manage all the healthcares internal processes such as assigning nurses, doctor, making payments and receiving payments. So by using the IT resources, the health care can have their processes flexible as those were never before (Ryu et al., 2013). Furthermore, managing the huge amount of information will be an easy task. Why the organizations require IT? The or ganizations can use the IT for establishing communication between them so that their capacity will not be bounded only to them. Importance of IT in Business Survival: For surviving in the business, it is crucial to implement and manage new processes for enhancing internal and external business processes. The information technology assists the healthcare organizations to reach out to the possible patients and reduce the cost of the processes. Through the remote work structure, it allows doctors and the patients to contact each other from anywhere (Low Chen, 2012). Reducing the time and effort of the processes are essential for surviving in the market as only through concentrating on the enhancement of the core business processes the organization can go forward to improve its quality of service. Communication is also essential for business survival. The healthcare organizations can communicate with other to solve the problem so that they can manage the whole processes successfully. The patients are the main key to serving, so the IT resources also concentrate on providing better patient satisfaction and increase the flexibility of the patient proce sses (Gaspar et al., 2013). IT requirements in Business: Cost: The IT can be implemented in an organization through two ways. First, implementing the in-house system and second, cloud based system. For two of the cases, the cost is different (Piho et al., 2014). The in-house system refers to the system that exists in the office premise, and all the cost have to be barred by the organization. Though in the case of cloud based system, the system is deployed in the cloud and the organization access the system through the sound internet connection (Ryu et al., 2013). For cloud service, the consumer organization has to pay only the monthly or weekly charges, and the cost of the resources are completely of the provider. Planning: The planning phase depends on upon the requirements of the healthcare organization. It consists of the concerns like how much resources are needed and what delivery model to be used. The quality of service and risk minimization are also included in the planning stage. Designing: Designing mainly concerns over the architecture of the system (Low Chen, 2012). Equipment: Software, hardware, backup, disaster recovery, database and much more are the various tools that need to be decided carefully before deploying the system (Chiao, Kunzle Reichert, 2012). Installation: Experienced and well-qualified personnel will be responsible for installing the system. From the system to the required resources, all the tools must be installed properly, and they must have the connection between them (Piho et al., 2014). Utilization of Information Technology in Business: Through the advertisement and product promotion, the healthcare organizations will be able to do marketing. The IT will be utilized for digital marketing such as promoting the name of the healthcare in various websites and applications (Chiao, Kunzle Reichert, 2012). The IT also assist in increasing the productivity of the processes regardless whether those are internal or external. The attaining of healthcare gets enhanced as the processes become more connected and are executed in sequence. The chance of mixing the responsibilities of the worker gets almost eliminated. The contact with the medicine provider and other utensil providers get increased. The patients can contact the doctor immediately from anywhere. For getting the appointment, they do not need to visit the healthcare (Gagnon et al., 2012). For minor cases, the patients can do video chats with the doctor. Reaching the customer are now an easy task. If the patient is failing to visit a doctor for more than two times, the n he or she are contacted. And the applications that are installed in the smartphones gets notices of the appointment before a day so that the patient do not forget. In healthcare business reducing the cost of the process is a great advantage. As the IT will automatically do most of the minor and medium tasks, the cost paying additional employees will be no more needed (Low Chen, 2012). It will also do the repetitive works for reducing the cost of running activities. Advantages: The advantages that the healthcare organizations are having because of the use of Information Technology are as following. It offers up-to-date, accurate and complete information of the patients. More reliable prescribing (Gagnon et al., 2012). Improving security and privacy of patient information. Sharing of the patients electronic information with more security (Dinh et al., 2013). More efficiency in terms of business activities for meeting objectives. Fast access to the patient and employee information. Reduce paperwork by the use of electronic health record or HER (Kellermann Jones, 2013). Provide the information to the person who actually need it. Provide better coordination between the doctors. Eliminates unnecessary processes and tests (Dinh et al., 2013). Electronic health record stores all the information of the patients and make it accessible at anytime from anywhere through an application. Through communicating with each other, the healthcare organizations are discovering new possibilities (Dinh et al., 2013). Manages authentication to the information. Such as the patient cannot access health information of another patient but the doctors can access that information (Kellermann Jones, 2013). Various Risks of IT in Healthcare: The first kind of risk is a strategic risk. If the planning and scheduling are assessed in a wrong way, then it can be a devastating result for the organization. The healthcare organization will lose its money and time. The risk in strategic planning is proportional to the complexity of the system. Handling and inheriting the IT framework can create many risks (Chiao, Kunzle Reichert, 2012). After the successful implementation of the system, it may not be easy to maintain the system properly. In that case, the risk can be too high as it as harmful as the failure of strategic planning. Information is everything in business. So losing the information can mean losing business. If the healthcare loses vital information, it surely will get affected by the financial issues. Security is a huge issue in terms of information technology (Gagnon et al., 2012). The attackers can hack the system and get all the valuable information. If the information of the patient gets unauthorized personnel, it will be against the confidentiality. Business Maintenance and Monitoring: For monitoring the business, the healthcare organizations are making use of electronic health record. It stores all the information of the patient and makes it available to the authorized personnel. For monitoring, the employees and doctors the database are used. The appointments will be stored for future planning (Chiao, Kunzle Reichert, 2012). The healthcare will analyze the information of the doctors for planning the next schedules. Recommendations: The suggestions for improving the HIS are as following. The healthcare organizations are required to increase the security. For that purpose, more aggressive approaches are needed to take (Flottorp et al., 2013). The patient privacy must be increased by establishing new regulations and security controls. The patients must take responsibilities for securing their information. Limited legislative processes are needed to be established (Middleton et al., 2013). Conclusion: The study concludes that the use of the HIS is essential to all the mid and large level healthcare organizations. The healthcare information system makes use of electronic health record for storing and retrieving patient information. The next generation technologies will be used for enhancing the patient satisfaction. The electronic health record increases the efficiency of data availability. Maintaining the system after implementation is crucial for any organization as the flaw in maintenance will not provide any profit to the organization. The system automates many of the low, mid and redundant processes. The final conclusion is that the HIS can bring advantage in conducting business in the healthcare industry, but it had to be used properly for getting the benefit from it. References: Chiao, C. M., Kunzle, V., Reichert, M. (2012). Towards object-aware process support in healthcare information systems. Dinh, H. T., Lee, C., Niyato, D., Wang, P. (2013). A survey of mobile cloud computing: architecture, applications, and approaches.Wireless communications and mobile computing,13(18), 1587-1611. 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