Healthcare professionals, as well as patients, are concerned that the information related to the patient’s health is used in the most convenient and efficient manner. The aim of information systems is to provide convenient access to patient data, ensure privacy and protection of all the information. Despite the fact that the information systems are widely used in health care, there is a number of pros and cons associated with their use.
Electronic Health Records
Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a system that stores information about all medical conditions; the custodian is a specifically authorized center (Health Authority) (Carayon et al., 2011). Health records contain the official data. Authorized centers and representatives of medical institutions, as well as laboratories and government agencies, can access them to improve the quality of health care. EHR impose crucial requirements on data protection, auditing of access to information and other. For instance, the disclosure of the existing record of cancer or sexually transmitted diseases in the patient’s card, even if the data is encrypted, can have negative consequences for the patient in the event of unauthorized access. In the US, the law “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” emphasized that health information in electronic form is the basis of modern health care (Carayon et al., 2011). Many projects have been initiated to support the transition to such information systems to ensure the exchange of information between different medical organizations without violating the confidentiality of personal data of patients and maintaining adequate security. However, there exist challenges related to sharing the information on the health status of patients; consequently, National Institute of Standards and Technology actively supports the standardization, certification, and IT projects in this field.
Electronic health records can bring many opportunities to care providers and their patients, but it depends on the ways the EHR are used. The standards of the meaningful use have been set to govern the use of the health records and to allow obtaining cash incentive awards by medical workers and hospitals in accordance with the criteria established in the standards to improve the systems and their use (Currie & Finnegan, 2011). Among the crucial benefits of the strategic use of EHR are such issues like ensuring that both patients and health care providers have the complete and accurate medical information. Ultimately, this allows patients to play an active role in the medical care.
The transition to information technologies is acute for the modern medical practice. EHR have enabled to cope with traditional problems that used to arise continually when working with paper medical records. The integrated nature of the EHR leads to the fact that the main development goals are security, privacy, and obtaining the conscious consent of the user for permission to access the data (Cherry, Ford, & Peterson, 2011). However, the complexity of modern security architectures can unacceptably raise the price of their integration with medical IT systems. For this reason, the developers of EHR are forced to seek for innovative and highly profitable solutions.
Personal Experience
In many cases, patients begin their contacts with the health system with a visit to small medical organizations, and therefore benefits from the use of electronic health records are most noticeable in such conditions. During my practice at a local hospital, patients reported the functionality of this approach, as it allowed them to obtain care quicker. All the data and medical history were available to the provider quite quickly. However, in general, the successful application of such systems is prevented by significant IT costs and lack of experience in health care workers. The cloud platforms are suitable and convenient for the delivery of applications as they provide a significant scalability and flexibility in case of changes, and they are low cost. Nevertheless, with respect to the EHR, they have rather strict requirements because of the sensitive nature of the data, regulatory constraints, and the need for sharing many aspects of data including health care providers, sponsors, government agencies, and patients.
Conclusion
EHR systems are indeed functional as they provide for the improvement of the overall quality of health services and the possibility of remote access to medical information. In addition, the staff can quickly get alerts about critical values of laboratory results that will allow providing assistance quicker. The system helps to avoid medical errors as it gives warnings of possible erroneous appointments and gives reminders about taking preventive measures (Denham et al., 2013). In addition, the system supports care providers through reminders of the services to be provided in accordance with the accepted standards of clinical practice. The information systems can reduce the number of laboratory analyses and tests because of the availability of data analysis carried out earlier and they give hints about the tests to be done. In addition, they accelerate the processes of health care as EHR facilitate direct interaction with patients. In the field of medical informatization experts actively discuss the existing problems that are associated with sensitivity and flexibility of systems and the need to train medical staff. In the future, the government should address the existing issues to ensure that the health care institutions have the same access to information systems and that the patient information is transmitted uninterruptedly and with due security.
References
Carayon, P., Cartmill, R., Blosky, M.A., Brown, R., Hackenberg, M., Hoonakker, P.,…Walker, J. (2011). ICU nurses’ acceptance of electronic health records. JAMIA, 18, 812-819.
Cherry, B., Ford, E., & Peterson, L. (2011). Experiences with electronic health records: Early adopters in long-term care facilities. Health Care Management Review, 36, 265-274.
Currie, W., & Finnegan, D. (2011). The policy-practice nexus of electronic health records adoption in the UK NHS: An institutional analysis. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 24, 146-170.
Denham, C., Classen, D., Swenson, S., Henderson, M., Zeltner, T., & Bates, D. (2013). Safe use of electronic health records and health information technology systems: Trust but verify. Journal of Patient Safety, 9(4), 177-89.