EMERGING HEALTHCARE INFORMATICS TRENDS

Emerging Healthcare Informatics Trends

Emerging Healthcare Informatics Trends

Active and evolutionary transformations are proceeding in the healthcare industry. The disputes faced in following the care procedure while meeting tactical business goals within the healthcare delivery system and accepting twenty first century digital business practices are overwhelming. Providing care in today's multifaceted, incorporated, healthcare delivery networks presents challenges formerly unseen in this industry. In particular, healthcare executives and clinical professionals are challenged to delineate and employ information systems that sustain an efficient and successful care process, while meeting the business needs of the healthcare delivery structure.

Accomplishing digital transformation and executing a Virtual Patient Record in today's intricate delivery networks presents a complication previously unobserved in the industry. The days of documenting in a paper layout are deemed obsolete in an industry that has provided way to exceedingly complex and sophisticated clinical functionality that is maintained by refined technologies, complex infrastructures, and constantly mounting demands for assimilation and diffusion of data for real-time analysis and proactive outcome management of the patient. Conventional paradigms and methods of paper documentation are miserably inadequate, inefficient, and futile in meeting today's incorporated healthcare business needs (Coile, 2000).

Nowadays healthcare organizations, providers as well as health plans, are progressively better equipped for the information age. Data warehouses, Intranets, and Clinical Information Systems have turn into products. Are healthcare institutes using this clinical information infrastructure successfully to make medical management decisions? (Drazen, 1999).

The term "Medical Management" is used to portray a broad range of actions, from the administration of a medical group practice, to utilization management by a health plan, to the supervision of a group of patients with a certain disease, either preventive or acute, etc (David, 2003).

Health Care Informatics

Health care informatics has been defined as “the integration of health sciences, computer science, information science, and cognitive science to assist in the management of health care information”. Since 1984 nursing informatics has established itself into a specialized role and the American Nurses Association has provided scope and standards regarding this specialty (Guenther, 2006). As nursing informatics continues to develop in the healthcare field, technological advancements are continuously rising along with the need for leaders to guide healthcare professionals in the appropriate direction. Key roles must be played while implementing information systems so that the quality of care may be improved (McCormick, K., Delaney, C., et al). Nursing Informatics' goal is to “optimize information management and communication through the use of information technology and support nurses as they improve the health of populations, communities, families and individuals by optimizing information management and communication”(Curlin and Simpson, 2001). The role of the informatics nurse is crucial to the evolving issues and trends in nursing informatics. Roles of the Informatics Nurse Specialist include, but are not limited to, the following:

 1) Employing the life cycle of information systems which include analyzing data, NI (Nursing Informatics) and IS (Information Systems) requirements

2) Designing, choosing, implementing, and evaluating IS; these systems support patients, nurses, and their management of health information

3) Nursing knowledge facilitator (Curlin and Simpson, 2001).

Each role assumes its own responsibility when dealing with the new ...