IT in Health
This week focus was on the use of IT in eHealth. The term eHealth is used in Australia to refer to all the electronic services provided directly during management of patient care. These electronic services are focused on providing patients care. Some of examples of eHealth in Australia include, National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA), National eHealth information principal Committee (NEHIPC), and National health Information regulatory framework (NHIRF). The key stakeholders involved in eHealth are consumers, pharmacy, legal officer, Federal Government, and technologists.
Our government is committed to enhancing eHealth mainly because it’s a political buzzword and because it is economical in the long term. It will also help in ensuring that the right kind of health information is provided to the right people and on the right time. Proper utilization of eHealth will act as an infrastructure to facilitate exchange of information which will result to improved health.
EHealth has been employed extensively in information systems. Some of the applications include electronic health records used in hospitals, this has made retrieval of patients records so easy, eHealth is also used in telemedicine, in physician knowledge management and transmural care.
Advantages of ICT in health care
- Ability to correct symmetric information
- Better accessibility
- Off-site access
Disadvantages
- Privacy of information is not guaranteed. Information should only be distributed to the right people.
- Security- once the information is being shared in the network, it’s hard to make sure there is no intrusion by the wrong people.
- Adoption- it’s not easy to adopt this method
- Reliability- the reliability of the systems used cannot be guaranteed
- Education- people have to be taught how to use this service efficiently
In health profession privacy of the medical data collected is paramount. It is for this reason that there are rules governing how such kind of information should be handled. It is important to note that personal information should only be disclosed to the right authority and used only for the intended purpose.
Electronic health records (EHR) refers to a longitudinal electronic record of a given patient health containing information that has been collected during one or more encounters in health centers. Some of the major strengths of HER is that there is a symmetric distribution of information, patients can be able to access information easily, the management of patients is made easier and it’s a more patient centered care. However, the same has a number of weaknesses that need to be addressed if its implementation has to be successful. These weakness include the cost involved, privacy issues, how to integrate it with the existing information
Currently the deployment of a new online medical record has to be done parallel to the existing ones because if this is not done the project will fail since not many people will sign up for it. In Australia the E-health implementation plan is expected to take at least 19 years. the first three years will entail connecting and communicating, the following six years will involve collaboration, and lastly ten years will be for consolidation of the entire plan. Health sector in Australia is in need of improvement owing to the fact that the health expenditure as a proportion of the nation GDP has more than doubled in the last four and half decades. It is projected that if things do not change the health expenditure will be 16-20% of GDP by 2045. To salvage the situation, it is important that an overhaul in the health sector be done; its success however will be dependent on the support it will get from different stakeholders.
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