Three IT Applications within physician offices and hospital systems
There are three forms of health care information technology applications, which are telemedicine application, E-prescribing, and personal health records. Telemedicine systems have made it possible to pass on health care or medical information to people who may be far away from the source. They find it cumbersome to travel all the way to the source due to the distance or may not have adequate time to do so. Dissemination of this information is by use of the ICTS, which are current information and communication technologies.
E prescribing is a process of filling out a prescription and sending it to a health care practitioner by the use of the latest electronic generation or technology which is computer-based. The E-prescription will allow a physician assistant, nurse, or even a physician to assist a patient electronically to get a new prescription order or even to renew an old one. This is two-way traffic transmitted from the point of health care to the dispenser and vice-versa (Arabia, 2011).
A personal health record is a record that has health-related data of an individual. This record is electronic in that its storage and use is in a computer-based device. This form of record is available in the hospitals and clinical practitioners use them most of the time. The personal health records include billing data, which is necessary for health insurance when there are health claims. The personal health records provide an individual’s history in medicine, which is accurate, and in most cases should be complete. The data includes downloads of lab results, weight, or a patient outcome from the various sectors or manually inputted by the patient or the health practitioner.
Benefit(S) That Physicians Obtain From Using the IT Applications to Improve Healthcare Delivery
The telemedicine systems have a significant benefit: they carry on the advancement in the delivery of health care services. It is significant that it gets funding to finance it even from the states. Close monitoring of the number of patient visits through the electronically based devices has increased making the patients not to travel all the way from their homes to the health care to get the services. People in the rural areas do not have access to proper health care benefit from this kind of system.
Telemedicine also caters for the creation of business or employee recruitment or simply the retention of this form of business. The system will require skilled individuals or expertise to support them. This brings out the necessity of people who are highly exposed to the Information technology system to maintain or develop the systems, hence, retention of the business and recruitment of more people goes on (Hussain, 2008).
Telemedicine has made such a great impact on the health care arena in people’s life. It has sought for the longevity of life and delivered quality health care. The life expectancy has been significantly on the rise because of the immediate healthcare, which is of high quality and within reach of everyone. This interprets to good economic returns for the states as people will continue working for long due to the proper health and, hence, boost the country’s economy.
E-prescribing benefits the environment in that the use of paper is minimal or eliminated in some cases. This will reduce amount of litter and will save on the cutting down of trees to manufacture the paper. The trees, which are important for life sustenance, are preserved and kept for future use. With the elimination of paper, the prescriptions become rather efficient in that there is no writing error. The cases of ineligible handwriting are eliminated as the prescription is created using a computer-based device, which depends on input in form of typing the letters.
The E-prescription sees to it that there is no use of some generic products because; the only prescription to the patient is from registered drug companies. This will reduce the cost of production that companies incur in order to keep up with the cheaper generics. The system is rather safe for the patents in that, the efficiency is increased and they have qualified clinicians ready to assist them with drug prescription rather than just picking out drugs for themselves that they thought would work best for their health.
The E-prescription has an advantage to the providers of this service, where there is enhanced efficiency due to minimal errors in giving a prescription and it becomes possible for them to serve more than one customer. There is improvement in this form of health care as it gives room for consultation among the health practitioners before the transmission of a prescription to a patient. Long term and short-term incentives to the customers are also possible as they have discounts allowed on various drugs making more patients to use e prescription as the best form of consultation (Ornum, 2009).
Personal health records are important to a patient in that they ensure that their health information remains up-to-date and that it is truthful and honest for it to reflect their health status. This goes a long way in keeping them in check for any early detection of a chronic disease or anything that need treatment at an early stage. The patients who have kept track of their condition will be aware of the time in their life they contracted a certain disease and may warn those who they interacted with for treatment if the disease was contagious.
The personal health records help the health practitioners to make better decisions about the recommended treatment of a patient, which includes surgical procedure, administration of drugs or carrying out therapy. This also ensures there is no limitation of face-to-face conversation in that the specialist may from time to time require the patient to be there physically. This will help to record the results of tests carried out on them or simply a narration of their health history (Hussain, 2008).
The personal health records are accurate and very efficient at times as they eliminate the challenge or errors when taking results after tests. For example, in case of lab tests, the lab technician instead of physically recording the results will simply prompt the electronic system to download the results for the patient. There are also other tests such as the weight measurements and this can be available from the internet for the ability of smart phones.
Challenges That Physicians Experience from Using the IT Applications to Improve Healthcare Delivery
The disadvantage of the telemedicine health care system is that there is minimal interaction between the patient and the health practitioner. Therefore, it will not be possible to note some symptoms that may be obvious to the practitioner; he or she can overlook them or may not lead to proper treatment.
References
Arabia, H. (2011). Software tools and algorithms for biological systems. New York: Springer Science Media.
Hussain, D. (2008). Wireless networks, information processing, and systems. New York: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Ornum, M. (2009). Electronic prescribing: A safety and implementation guide. Ontario: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.