Currently, diabetes mellitus is one of the most common non-communicable diseases in the world. This factor threatens the entire population of the planet. Diabetes is characterized by a long duration and slow progression. This is a chronic disease that affects how the body converts food into energy. The main cause of diabetes mellitus is an incorrect lifestyle, which affects the secretion or action of insulin in the body. This work aims at reviewing legislative considerations, collecting information and its life cycle, which are associated with diabetes. The target demographic to be investigated is the population of the United States of America.
Legal Considerations
First of all, it is necessary to understand the difference between health information confidentiality, privacy, and security. Thus, data confidentiality protects patient data from unauthorized use. Confidentiality, in turn, deals with such an aspect as protecting the right of individuals to control the information they provide to the institution. The concept of security also implies how the personal data of patients in a medical organization is protected.
Clinical institutions can rely on a wide range of technical controls to prevent privacy violations. In addition, specialized laws have been established that regulate this sphere of activity. An example would be the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which directly affects the staff, policies and practices of providing medical services (Edemekong et al., 2018). It is engaged in protecting private information from unauthorized access and fighting fraud and abuse in healthcare. Thus, for this study, it is necessary to obtain personal information of diabetic patients, which implies compliance with legislation and privacy, protection and privacy policies. It is necessary to gain an understanding of how many people in America suffer from this chronic disease. In addition, it is important to know the symptoms of the disease and how people struggle with the manifestations of diabetes and keep the disease under control.
An effective approach can be considered a transaction processing system. This type of information system is engaged in collecting, storing, and extracting patient data. The advantage of this method is fast response time and real-time operation (Muslihah & Nastura, 2020). Research shows that “database that interacts with family health team to integrate all patient’s clinical data from birth to death” (Salavati et al., 2017, p. 1701). Moreover, the transactional information system ensures the protection of the received personal data, which is critically important in the field of healthcare. In addition, it maintains a stable database and reduces the risk of information loss in critical and unforeseen circumstances.
Information Collection
Determining the population for the study is of particular importance. For this scientific work, it was chosen to study the population of the United States of America. A transactional information system was used to obtain the necessary information. This approach provides the largest amount of valuable data without violating the concept of confidentiality. The main documents that will be needed are papers that provide information about the severity of the transferred disease, medications taken and measures taken to combat the disease. I believe that this information can be found both in the office where my practice takes place, and in the hospital admission or emergency room. The main condition in this case becomes obtaining consent from the institution to comply with all legal norms.
I would prefer to conduct a study on young patients to understand the nature of diabetes in minors. This is due to the fact that the number of children with diabetes is increasing every year, and the diagnosis of this serious disease does not always have the greatest efficiency and effectiveness. The danger of diabetes mellitus in children and adolescents is the development of severe late complications, such as diabetic retinopathy, nephropathy, polyneuropathy, etc. At the same time, the course of diabetes mellitus, especially type 1, is unstable at a young age: occasionally the glucose level decreases and increases. As a time frame, I would take the last five years, since it was at this time that the most relevant studies were created. Moreover, they are fueled by a large amount of information previously researched and are useful because they shorten and interpret it without losing the main meaning. I would choose history and physical data, progress notes, lab results as the documents for the review. I believe that the most useful system for me will be administrative and clinical, as they collect, store and provide the most valuable information. Moreover, the necessary data can be obtained through points of care, computerized physician order entry and results management.
Information Lifecycle
In this process, it is necessary to observe the life cycle of the system to manage the necessary information. It implies an approach to problem solving that can be applied with any technology. For example, electronic medical records or security devices can be used. The life cycle includes several related stages, similar to the process of patient care. The stages through which information passes are collection, processing, distribution, use, storage and disposal, including destruction and deletion of data. If all these steps are followed, researchers can get the most valuable information and use it productively.
The main criterion for the implementation of such a system in HIE is the stage-by-stage implementation to avoid negative consequences. This is due to the fact that information on diseases is of particular value, as it contributes to further research that will help in finding ways for more effective treatment of diabetes. The data will be collected by accessing documents and records in medical institutions. This process will be done by researchers who are interested in getting the best results. The data will be stored on electronic media, as in the era of information technology development, people are provided with many opportunities to use them. However, it is worth remembering about such an aspect as cybersecurity, which is critically important when choosing this storage method. To ensure the safety of data, specialized personnel who work in this field and will control access to it can be involved.
To ensure interoperability, it is necessary to apply and optimize the services of electronic medical records and the exchange of medical information. Paper sources of information can only be used by one person at a time in a certain place. The most important challenge in the standardization of information is that most health information systems cannot exchange information with other systems. The process is also complicated by the fact that the existing standards have not been implemented enough, or have not been established. The information should be destroyed in five or ten years, since after that time it may no longer be relevant by destroying its traces in information technology devices.
References
Edemekong, P. F., Annamaraju, P., & Haydel, M. J. (2018). Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. StatPearls Publishing.
Muslihah, I., & Nastura, S. A. (2020). Transaction processing system analysis using the distribution management system (DMS) nexsoft distribution 6 (ND6). International Journal of Computer and Information System (IJCIS), 1(2), 31-34. Web.
Salavati, H., Gandomani, T. J., & Sadeghi, R. (2017). A robust software architecture based on distributed systems in big data healthcare. 2017 International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics (ICACCI), 1701-1705. Web.