Proceedings of the 4th National Conference; INDIACom-2010
Computing For Nation Development, Fe
uary 25 – 26, 2010
Bharati Vidyapeeth’s Institute of Computer Applications and Management, New Delhi
Role of Information Technology in Health Care
Sampada S. Gulavani * and R.V. Kulkarni **
*Asst. Professor, Bharati Vidyapeeth Institute of Management, Kolhapur, XXXXXXXXXX
** Director, Chh. Shahu Central Institute of Business Education & Research, SIBER, Kolhapur,
d
XXXXXXXXXX
ABSTRACT
Information Technology (IT) has the potential to improve the
quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare. This paper focuses
on the expanding role of IT in Healthcare Information.
Communication technologies had a significant impact on
healthcare and the delivery of health services. From
Telemedicine to electronic health records ,a variety of
healthcare services have been shown to improve operational
and administrative efficiencies, clinical outcomes,
documentation and information flow in a global settings, home
care units, rural health centers and large u
an
hospitals. However adoption and benefits have not been
uniformly distributed and reliability of success has been
difficult. So it is necessary to improve the quality, cost,
efficiency and capacity of the healthcare service.
KEYWORDS
Healthcare, Information Technology, Clinical Decision
Support, Clinical Data Processing, Electronic Health Record,
CPOE, Electronic Prescribing, PHR.
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Healthcare comprises directing and controlling a group of one
or more people or entities for the purpose of coordinating and
harmonizing that group towards accomplishing a goal.
Healthcare often encompasses the deployment and
manipulation of human resources, financial resources,
technological resources, and natural resources. Indian
healthcare Industry is growing at 12% annually, according to a
ecent report by Springboard Research. The Indian healthcare
sector has started to serve customers or patients better to
alance the profitable business operation and meeting social
objectives. The main area of focus is to improve the service to
the end customer i.e. patients. It is observed that if substantial
improvement is to be achieved over the coming decade, then
automation of clinical, financial, and administrative
transactions is essential to improve the quality, preventing
e
ors, enhancing consumer confidence and improving
efficiency in the health care system.[1]
2.0 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Information Technology (IT) has the potential to improve the
quality, safety, and efficiency of health care. Delivering quality
health care require providers and patients to integrate complex
information from many different sources. By increasing the
ability of physicians, nurses, clinical technicians, and others to
eadily access and use the right information about their patients
should improve care. The ability for patients to obtain
information to better manage their condition and to
communicate with the health system can also improve the
efficiency and quality of care. IT allows healthcare providers to
collect, store, retrieve, and transfer information electronically.
To capture the role of informal interactions in the process of
knowledge diffusion, physicians relies on the recommendations
of colleagues with whom they interact on a day-to-day basis.
Colleague recommendations are helpful because they can link
specific treatments to the clinical needs of particular patients
under a physician’s care, but these recommendations are not
sufficient to resolve the problem of information overload. After
all, physicians making recommendations have limits on their
own cognitive abilities and these limits will generally make it
hard for them to keep a
east of all the newest procedures. For
this reason, physicians will also have to devote time to
independent reading in medical journals. Reading journal
articles may expose the physician to the newest innovations,
ut journal articles do not identify for physician the specific
patients for which the innovation applies. The influence of IT
enabled decision support follows naturally in this set-up. In
comparison to traditional learning modalities (colleagues’
ecommendations and independent reading of medical journals)
, the computer based decision support tools are more likely to
suggest treatments that are both new and relevant to the care of
a specific patient. As a result, the new information technology
will have greater influence on physicians and under plausible
conditions, enhance the rate of diffusion of new knowledge. [3]
IT enable doctors, paramedics, patients, insurers and regulators
everywhere to become aware of new information quickly. A
emarkable feature of IT is its capacity to establish and
disseminate publicly accessible global databases of prices of
healthcare commodities and services. The core role of IT in
healthcare may be understood from the way designs of
healthcare development and delivery enabled and supported by
IT include or exclude people and encourage or discourage their
participation in influencing decisions about allocation of
healthcare resources. Participation is a vital aspect of
healthcare because health consumption requires participation in
its production at every level starting from individual persons
(diet, hygiene, lifestyle, belief and trust in one or more medical
systems) to communities (safety, pollution control, sanitation,
public hygiene), and nations (healthcare standards, budgetary
allocations, medical education).[2]
2.1 Need for IT in Healthcare
Following points discuss the need of IT in healthcare :
Proceedings of the 4th National Conference; INDIACom-2010
i. The challenge in the 21st century is a surplus of patient
information. The human
ain, even a physician's
ain, cannot
keep up with the exponential growth in medical knowledge that
will occur in forthcoming years.
ii. The ability of human to memorize things has remained flat,
ut the medical knowledge that needs to be assimilated is
increasing geometrically. It is difficult for the human
ain to
memorize all the information at a given period of time. With
the help of computer we can store massive amount of data and
can retrieve it when required. Rapid technology advancements
and continuous increase in performance/price indexes have
made information technology (IT) applicable at all levels in
health care organizations and patient management.
iii. It is difficult for physicians to keep up with the rapidly
changing state of medical knowledge and to understand what
these changes mean for the treatment of specific patients. In
such situation IT based decision support system could help
doctors to learn about new treatments.
iv. Health Information Technology (Health IT) allows
comprehensive management of medical information and its
secure exchange between healthcare consumers and
providers.[4]
3.0 IT TOOLS IN HEALTHCARE
Today number of tools exist and are being developed to help
health information technology (IT) stakeholders to plan for and
to evaluate health IT. Health IT programs serve to
ing it to
individual stakeholders such as providers, patients, hospitals,
pharmacists, and others in this industry. These Health IT tools
support in specific areas and promote better, more efficient
healthcare through the use of today's technologies. Commonly
used health IT tools are discussed below :[6] [7]
I. Electronic Medical Records (EMR) : The EMR provides a
clinician with real-time access to patient information, such as
patients medical condition, visits to health providers, images
and reports of diagnostic procedures, schedule of services
,allergies and contact information to caregivers and a complete
longitudinal record of care evidence based on decision support
tools that can be used to aid clinicians in decision making. A
fully integrated EMR enables a physician to update clinical and
other information about a patient on a continuous basis. The
EMR can automate and streamline a clinician's workflow,
ensuring that all clinical information is communicated .The
EMR can support the collection of data for uses such as billing,
quality management, outcome reporting, public health disease
surveillance and reporting. Electronic document has
tremendous advantages over the paper document such as it
does not require a warehouse for storage and is readily
accessible from anywhere.
II. Clinical Decision Support (CDS) :
CDS encompasses computerized alerts and reminders to care
providers and patients, clinical guidelines, condition-focused
order sets, patient data reports and summaries, diagnostic
support, and other tools that enhance decision making in
clinical workflow. CDS provide clinicians, staff and patients
with knowledge and person-specific information, presented at
appropriate times to enhance health and health care. CDS has
the potential to increase adherence to clinical guidelines,
protocols and best practices which helps to avoid medication
e
ors, and to prevent complications. CDS requires
computable biomedical knowledge, person-specific data, and a
easoning or inferencing mechanism that combines knowledge
and data to generate “advice” to clinicians.
III. Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) : CPOE
is used by physicians for ordering medications, orders for x-
ays and other diagnostic procedures, refe
als, discharges, and
transfers. One important higher-level application in CPOE is
that providers write orders including prescriptions using
computers. Computerization of ordering is important because
most actions in health care follows an order.
IV. Electronic Prescribing (E-prescribing ): E-prescribing is
the transmission, using electronic media of prescription
etween a prescriber, dispenser, pharmacy manager, either
directly or through an intermediary, including an e-prescribing
network. E-prescribing includes, two-way transmissions
etween the point of care and the dispenser. It is
ecommended that electronic prescription applications should
e robust enough to include safety checks for allergies, drug-
drug interaction warning, dose appropriateness, drug-clinical
condition warning, and drug-laboratory alerts.
V. Health Information Exchange : It is the electronic
connectivity via internet and other networks that enables health
care providers to exchange patient health information. It is
necessary that the networks that permit electronic
communication among providers must be secure in order to
safeguard the information from unauthorized access, use and
disclosure. It requires to develop data and messaging standards
to establish the critical goal of interoperability to communicate
with one another.
VI. Personal Health Record (PHR) : PHR is an electronic
application through which individuals can maintain and
manage their health information in a private, secure, and
confidential environment. The most salient feature of