Introduction
Health informatics is a relatively emerging and interdisciplinary field within the healthcare sector that utilizes information technology to consolidate and scrutinize health records to enhance healthcare outcomes. The field relies on information science methods and technologies to solve emerging problems, make significant decisions, and promote quality care in all biomedical sciences’ fundamental and applied areas. The field emerged in the 1960s after the discovery of computers that could store large data amounts. As an emerging trend in the healthcare sector, practitioners use health informatics to handle devices, resources, and methods that the medical industry needs to attain, store, retrieve, and utilize health and medical data. With the gradual development of these technologies over the past years, health informatics has dramatically improved healthcare outcomes by enhancing collaboration and coordination among caregivers, increasing accuracy, and streamlining medical processes.
Healthcare Informatics and Impact on Nursing Care
Health informatics is the use of data technology to improve human health. Specifically, Fridsma (2018) defines health informatics as the science of gathering, analyzing, and utilizing health data to improve health and healthcare practices. Similarly, according to Hersh (2022), health informatics, also known as biomedical and health informatics, refer to the use of information facilitated by technology to enhance personal health, public health, healthcare, and health- or biomedicine-related research. As a result, the discipline comprises an intersection between technology, people, and information. Indeed, nursing informatics is integrating nursing knowledge and data with technology to manage and bring together health information (Hersh, 2022). Thus, health informatics entails collecting, storing, repossession, and utilizing medical data to enhance collaboration between healthcare practitioners and patients.
Health informatics has played a significant role in promoting the quality of nursing care. Today, caregivers rely on health informatics for enhanced communication and highly performing collaboration platforms, making it easy to manage healthcare workflows, coordination, and patient outcomes. Indeed, the discipline has improved data access and systems integration, making information and analysis more significant than ever. According to Kumari (2019), health informatics have enhanced nurses’ training and made learning more objective, improving patient outcomes. Nurses today rely on the available data to detect endemic issues within the healthcare organization and deliberate on the most effective ways to solve these issues. Differently, Saheb and Saheb (2019) note that health informatics technology dramatically enhances the quality of nursing care through improved compliance with the practice guidelines, reduced medical errors, and lower adverse reactions to prescribed drugs. Besides, the technology enhances laboratory or medication data processing, which is a vital determinant of the quality of care. Ultimately, health informatics improves the quality of nursing care through improved patient safety and effective decision-support systems.
Moreover, health informatics have facilitated enhanced care through the increased prevalence of value-based other than the fee-for-service model of care. Expressly, nurses today use health informatics to attain systematic and evidence-based treatment that prevents unnecessary and expensive procedures. This technology allows the nurses to establish and enforce the best practices while meeting the patient’s needs. Nurses also utilize clinical decision support systems to harness data from digital records and universal medical devices to eliminate waste and standardize care (Saheb & Saheb, 2019). Besides, the coordination of care through enhanced communication and access to information has also made nursing care more efficient. Health informatics has greatly influenced nursing care by coordinating care and promoting evidence-based treatment.
Article Critique
Article 1
“The Role of Health Informatics in Facilitating Communication Strategies for Community Health Workers in Clinical Settings: A Scoping Review” is an informative article written by qualified personnel in the medical field. This article’s authors have a transparent background in medicine, social sciences, community health, and research. The involvement of professionals in the writing of this article is a significant strength that gives the paper more outstanding professionalism and a key focus on the main study area. It uses references to acknowledge the published work of other people. Kolla et al. (2021) utilize clear and precise language to outline the study limitations, giving the audience a chance to put research findings into context and assess the validity of the study findings. These factors serve as the major strengths of the paper.
However, although the article contains informative content, it lacks a conclusion to give the reader of the critical aspects of the paper. Indeed, the report lacks closure to remind the audience of the primary contents and their significance in practice. Given that the use of health informatics in healthcare is a complex issue, the lack of a guiding and quality conclusion adversely affected the quality of the entire paper. Besides, it also contains some minor mistakes like word and sentence errors, which influence the readability and understandability of the document. Ultimately, the lack of a conclusion body and the presence of minor mistakes within the sentences affects the quality of the paper.
Notably, the findings of the present article support the essay theme that health informatics improves the quality of care and patient safety. Kolla et al. (2021) support that health informatics facilitates communication and integration, ultimately improving patient healthcare outcomes and reducing care disparities among minority groups. Care coordination makes it even more possible for nurses and community health workers to attain quality care. With the high professionalism of the article authors, the use of health informatics continues to be a reliable strategy to enhance patient safety and care. Besides, countries with health disparities can use this technology to understand the social determinants of care and strengthen equity. Thus, the article does impressive work that aligns with the essay theme.
Article 2
“A systematic review of the impact of health information technology on nurses’ time” is a scholarly article that contains a wide range of strengths and weaknesses. In this article, Moore et al. (2020) conducted a systematic literature review to assess the impact of health informatics on the practitioner’s time. This research methodology is a significant strength that gave the researchers a direct and narrow focus on the question, facilitated comprehensive search and access to evidence, and enhanced the validity of the overall findings. Besides, the article is likely to have lower bias levels due to the wide range of evidence from 2004 to 2019, which used different research methodologies and samples. However, the use of numerous studies split across various health informatics systems is a significant limitation to this study that affected the generalizability of the findings. Specifically, these studies limit the ability to apply the results to the larger nurse population and the overall impact of health informatics. Hence, although the use of systematic literature review methodology served as a significant strength of this article, its reliance on different studies with numerous health informatics systems is a considerable weakness of the paper and the respective findings.
However, based on the overall conclusion of this article, it is evident that health informatics have drastically changed nursing care. The systematic review noted that health informatics systems improved nurses’ time and made them more productive. Specifically, this technology increased the nurse’s documentation time. It enhanced the redistribution of the nurses’ time to engage in value-adding activities like offering direct care and communicating with other practitioners and patients’ families. Besides, the findings support the study theme since it supports that health informatics reduce the prevalence of medical errors, lessen the frequency of adverse drug reactions, and promote preventive healthcare (Moore et al., 2020). This article’s findings support this study’s theme that integrating health informatics into practice enhances the quality of care and patient safety. Indeed, it elaborates how the technology facilitates the redistribution of the nurses’ time and allocation of the available time on value-adding activities within the healthcare practice. Therefore, this article supports that health informatics is a sure way to enhance patient safety and improve overall nursing or healthcare outcomes.
Conclusion
Overall, health informatics is a rapidly evolving technology that has drastically improved the quality of care and patient safety. Since its discovery in the 1960s, the technology has reduced medical errors and adverse drug reactions and enhanced coordinated care and communication. Indeed, based on the two analyzed articles, it is evident that the future of quality care depends on the effective integration of health informatics in healthcare practices. Besides its impact on quality care, health informatics also enhance health equity across different groups. Thus, advancing health informatics should address the present challenges and improve the technology.
References
Fridsma, D. B. (2018). Health informatics: a required skill for 21st-century clinicians. BMJ, 362. Web.
Hersh, W. (2022). Health Informatics: Practical Guide, 8th Edition. LULU COM
Kolla, A., Lim, S., Zanowiak, J., & Islam, N. (2021). The Role of Health Informatics in Facilitating Communication Strategies for Community Health Workers in Clinical Settings: A Scoping Review. Journal of public health management and practice: JPHMP, 27(3), E107.
Kumari, R. (2019). The impact of informatics on nursing education and promoting quality of health care. International Journal of Advances in Nursing Management, 7(3), 285-288. Web.
Moore, E. C., Tolley, C. L., Bates, D. W., & Slight, S. P. (2020). A systematic review of the impact of health information technology on nurses’ time. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 27(5), 798-807. Web.
Saheb, T., & Saheb, M. (2019). Analyzing and visualizing knowledge structures of health informatics from 1974 to 2018: a bibliometric and social network analysis. Healthcare informatics research, 25(2), 61-72.