Health Informatics

Office of National coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has funded this program to find breakthrough innovations in the field of Health Information Technology (IT). This research program was awarded $60 million and this program is divided into four focus areas. This program brings together researchers, healthcare providers, and other health IT sector stakeholders in order to transform the research products into practice. This program is designed to improve quality, safety and efficiency of healthcare using advanced information technology. According to Healthit.gov “current adoption rates of health IT in different states we see that some states are better than others” [1], hence this program is designed to find the factors that are hindering the adoption of health IT and the products developed using this project should help propagate the growth of health IT. This program has both short-term and long-term related goals hence they focus both on current and future needs of health IT products. I have selected this program because it is important to understand the factors that are effecting healthcare practices health IT adoption and work towards analyzing and finding solutions to those problems, so that there is a 100% rate of adoption and data flow is seamless between the healthcare practices. This program helps keep the maintenance cost of the products developed to minimal as it focuses both short and long term needs. There are 4 focus areas to

Health information is a fundamental piece of data which represents a person, business, organization, or a community. This data is vital in monitoring and coordination of care for individuals and communities. It not only monitors and coordinates patient care, but reduces costly mistakes and prevent duplication of treatments as well as taking a pivotal role in preserving, securing, and protecting personal health information. Since, this information is extremely essential and sensitive, it must remain secure and safe to prevent frauds and cyber-attacks. First of all, this paper discusses vitality of the health information in regards to individuals, professionals, and organizations along with its benefits to improve overall quality of life. Secondly, it discusses the role of information technology in various aspects of the industry and the what the future holds within IT.

The electronic protected health information (ePHI) gets electronically stored and collected in hard copy form as they secure the information. According to the U.S. Department of health and Human Service Office for Civil Rights (OCR) report, millions of people have been impacted by HIPAA data breaches. Hence, healthcare organizations must protect and secure personal health data now more than ever because of the threats that are associated with information. This would substantially increase the protection of healthcare from cyber threats. Moreover, these people are extremely diverse and the cleverness of their data information must be organized within hospitals. Medical records are in high demand because of the sophistication of the records.

The health IT system is essential to transform the delivery of health care. Innovation within the IT system includes efficient data use through warehouses as they expand health information, which allows for big improvements in the technological use. These improvements would ensure that data user safety will allow the smooth exchange of information transfer electronically between different health care providers. In this case, most hospital employees and health care organizations understand how the health information technology (IT) is important for the HCO’s functions. The passing of “the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) legislation in 2009, with its specific attention to advancing EHRs, federal dollars are dedicated to expanding EHR use in physician offices and more” (Abdelhak pg. 180). This shows that a federal government has an ability to change in the healthcare industry, so the government should incorporate science and technology development. The private sector and government funding resources will also have a significant impact to play a great role in the exploration of new software operations in terms of advancing the technological environment. Advancing this area of the organization encourages health Information

Along with this is a variety of methods to store information. For these reasons, there needs to be multiple security policies and methods that needs to be implemented to ensure that compliance is being met now and for future use. With all of these variables, health care organizations need to make sure they are meeting criteria when it comes to moving this information through these HIE networks including: security management, interoperability, internal and external access control, going hand in hand with access control, patient information and transaction integrity, and central storage (SafeNet, 2015, pg.3).

Data loss is a major issue when it comes to electronic health records. A computer crash could wipe out vital data that you’ve been accumulating for years, jeopardizing your staff’s ability to ensure continuity of care for all the patients. Accordingly, when you use EHR software, you also must put into place a robust backup plan. Many practices opt to conduct offsite backups of their data through a cloud computing services provider. Even if your local servers suffer

Health informatics has successfully captured the attention of clinical and public health leaders around the nation as they realize its potential to solve problems, cut cost and enhance patient experience. As discussed in class, The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) of 2009 initiated a program designed to equip hospitals and medical practices around the country with electronic health record systems. Known as the Meaningful Use program, it has provided financial encouragements to health care organizations to install these computerized systems. This act has resulted in a huge increase of electronic health records (EHR) companies and has generated countless jobs for healthcare data analysts and related IT positions.

Facts: In the United States, roughly 80 to 85 percent of healthcare providers still rely heavily on paper-based tools for record keeping. Their fear is that when system becomes unavailable, they can easily and reliably resort to the paper record. They have no reliable, secured and monitored networked system, no system redundancy, and no disaster recovery system in place. A typical U.S. hospital has multiple information systems, most of which don't work together coherently very well and hence there is redundancy and duplication of data across all these systems. They need not just a homogeneous systems but also a secured, monitored, and reliable ones. There is an excessive time, money, and resources amount, spent on data cleansing rather than

In this paper, I will outline the pros and cons as well as issues such as safety, cost, security and other topics that relates to the Health Information Technology.

Demographic shifts in the global population, greater levels of technological disruption due to the Internet, social media and the en masse adoption of smartphones and tablet PCs are together re-defining the healthcare informatics market. System and informatics theories have emerged as the foundational elements of healthcare informatics supported by the Data, Information. Knowledge (DIK) Model which acts as a taxonomy for these developments (Haugh, 2005). Systems and informatics theories along with the DIK Model form the ontological foundations of healthcare informatics field of research occurring today and will continue to provide a basis for further research (Braganza, 2004). The intent of this analysis is to evaluate the contributions of systems and informatics, the role of the DIK Model, expert systems in nurse care and medicine, and the use of decision aids and decision support systems. All of these elements are critically important to strategic information systems plans healthcare providers put into place to serve patients while giving healthcare professionals the applications, systems and software they need to excel in their roles (Djellal, Gallouj, 2007).

unambiguous, and easily applied in practice. Moreover, since the field of informatics is in a

Disasters have become an inevitable part of businesses and organizations as well. They not only have a major effect on business and organizational continuity; they also result to an overhaul in organizational operational mechanisms (Awasthy, 2009). It is for this reason that many organizations and business resort to preparing business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans that will facilitate better disaster management in future. Effective disaster recovery plans are important to every business and organization (Thejendra, 2008).

Disaster recovery is the process of an organisation uses to recover access the data, and also hardware that are needed to recollect the performance to be in normal position after a disaster occurs. While disaster recovery plans have to be focus in every aspect in any organisation and bringing the gap closure after destruction it can be like data, hardware, or software have been lost and the manpower that composes much of any organisation.

The Information technology systems can offer huge value to the company in term of Disaster Recovery. Here, the information can be stored and quickly recalled. However, there is possible to present susceptibility; when access to this information is interrupted the company and its customers often suffer. This is why it is vital to have a backup system in place that will successfully backup and protect necessary data. this will store the information and also allows for system continuity and maintenance of communications services. Preparing a company for possible disasters and implementing a plan is the area of business continuity. Such processes will enable activity to continue after a disaster take place.

Disaster Recovery Planning is the critical factor that can prevent headaches or nightmares experienced by an organization in times of disaster. Having a disaster recovery plan marks the difference between organizations that can successfully manage crises with minimal cost, effort and with maximum speed, and those organizations that cannot. By having back-up plans, not only for equipment and network recovery, but also detailed disaster recovery plans that precisely outline what steps each person involved in recovery efforts should undertake, an organization can improve their recovery time and minimize the disrupted time for their normal business functions. Thus it is essential that disaster recovery plans are carefully laid