HIT APPLICATION IN CLINICAL AREA

Health Information Technology Application in Clinical area

Health Information Technology Application in Clinical area

Introduction

Health Information Technology (HIT) provides framework to describe the comprehensive management of health information and its secure exchange between consumers, providers, government and quality entities, and insurers. HIT in general is increasingly viewed as the most promising tool for improving the overall quality, safety and efficiency of the health delivery system.

In general, the various IT applications fall into three categories viz. administrative and financial systems that facilitate billing, accounting, and other administrative tasks, clinical systems that facilitate or provide input into the care process and infrastructure that supports both the administrative and clinical applications. Broad and consistent utilization of HIT will improve health care quality, prevent medical errors, reduce health care costs, increase administrative efficiencies, decrease paperwork and expand access to affordable care.

Interoperable health IT will improve individual patient care, but it will also bring many public health benefits including early detection of infectious disease outbreaks around the country, improved tracking of chronic disease management and evaluation of health care based on value enabled by the collection of de-identified price and quality information that can be compared.

Applications and Benefits

Usefulness of implementing HIT must take into consideration several factors viz. the potential of this technology to improve health care quality, safety, and patient satisfaction and how this potential has been demonstrated. The cost-effectiveness of the technology the business case for adoption of the technology including the total costs of implementation (both financial and in terms of resources) and any cost savings that accrue.

Concerns exist that those who bear the greatest share of such costs are not able to recoup those costs. The ability to generalize the effects of an HIT intervention on costs and benefits in existing systems (using published experience with or research on these systems) to the technology's use by other health care organizations.



Major Concerns

Diffusion of IT in health care is generally low (varying, however, with the application and setting) but surveys indicate that providers plan to increase their investments. Drivers of invest promise of quality and efficiency gains. Barriers include the cost and complexity of IT implementation. Diffusion of information technology in hospitals varies with the type of technology. It is greatest in administrative and financial applications such as patient registration, billing, and payroll. Clinical applications, such as computerized provider order entry for drugs or other items (e.g., lab work) and electronic health records, are less diffused. Infrastructure technologies build the base that other technologies work from, and include both widely diffused technologies, such as e-mail and telecommunications, and those that are less common, such as wireless connections and voice recognition.

While many factors push hospitals to invest in IT, others pose barriers. Investment in IT is costly and must compete with other priorities, including investment in bricks and mortar, as well as in technologies with more direct application to clinical care and greater certainty for increased revenues, such as new imaging ...