Essay Sample on HITs: Challenges in Implementing New Technologies in Healthcare Organizations

Introduction

Generally, it is evident that the field of IT continues to increase, and its uses are beneficial to various organizations, including healthcare. As compared to the process of implementing new technologies in organizations, it is different in healthcare organizations due to high stakes. Hence, the application of HIT's are only performed after significant and careful research has been conducted. An application of new technologies in a healthcare setting requires a statistically substantial positive impact of more than 98% in both efficiencies and outcomes. On this account, healthcare leaders and nurse informaticists are responsible for formulating the strategies of application of new clinical systems. Most of these strategies are based on informaticists, technology trends, or benefited from other existing technologies. This paper will review in-depth five peer-reviewed articles that relate to the application of clinical systems explaining its efficiencies and outcomes improvement.

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Electronic Health Records (EHR)

EHR can be described as centered and real-time records of the patient, which makes the availability of secure and instant information for only authorized users. As an EHR includes treatment and medical patient histories, EHR clinical system is designed and developed to go afar collection of standard patient's clinical data as it also consists of the provision of patient care. Electronic health records play a vital role as part of the HIT (Health information technology). They can contain the medical history of a patient, medications, diagnoses, immunization dates, treatment plans, radiology images, allergies, and test and laboratory results (Rajkomar et al., 2018). Allow access to evidence-based tools that help provides in the process of decision making relating to the care of patients; and streamlines and automate workflow. One important EHR feature is the digital ability to sharing information across different healthcare organizations with other healthcare providers. This information may be shared with organizations like medical imaging facilities, emergency facilities, laboratories, pharmacies, and specialists, among others. All this is mainly for the provision of patient care (Mandel et al., 2016).

Interactive Patient Care Technology

Rao-Gupta, S., Kruger, D., Leak, L. D., Tieman, L. A., & Manworren, R. C. (2018). Leveraging interactive patient care technology to improve pain management engagement. Pain Management Nursing, 19(3), 212-221.

An IPC (Interactive Patient Care) technology can generally be defined as one of the healthcare strategies of clinical systems that focuses on providing patients with educational and entertainment resources on their bedside through the in-room television. Recently, the momentum of increasing the application of IPC in healthcare organizations has grown to include patient-facing interfaces, for example, social apps, smart televisions, mobile, and self-service patient portal. The expansion of IPC technologies increases the engagement footprint afar the patient's bedside, thus including the whole patient's care continuum, mainly adding home. IPC clinical systems have the capability of providing personalized interactive services based on the condition of the patient. It also gives healthcare professionals with pain assessments, patient education, and medication teaching, thus improving outcome and efficiency.

According to the research conducted by Rao-Gupta et al. (2018), IPC technology improves the engagement of pain management. In hospitals, many children experience a lot of pain, and parents report pain management dissatisfaction, hence the strategy of implementing IPC technology to improve these experiences. The main objective of the research was to engage hospitalized families and patients in addressing the pain of pediatric patients using IPC technology by stimulating conversations concerning the expectations of pain management and the effectiveness of treatment plan perceptions among parents, patients, and healthcare teams. Rao-Gupta et al. (2018)'s research utilizes the Plan-Do-Study-Act methodology that designs, develops, tests, and pilots the new healthcare workflows that integrate IPC technology with documented actions and automated medication dispensing system into EHR. The results obtained illustrated an increase in no pharmacologic interventions, the effectiveness of treatment evaluations, and pain assessment documentation. Family satisfaction about pain management, on the other hand, increased significantly by p=.006 from fiscal year 2014-to-2016 (Rao-Gupta et al., 2018). On this account, it is evident that by applying IPC technologies in the healthcare setting, families and patients engagement increased in taking an active role in treatment outcomes evaluation and pain treatment plans. Active engagement between families and patients has a practical positive effect on the change in organizational culture change hence improving patient care and outcomes (Rao-Gupta et al., 2018). In summary, the application of IPC technology in the healthcare setting has a positive impact on efficiencies or outcomes.

Social Media Platforms and Mobile Applications

Qiang, C. Z., Yamamichi, M., Hausman, V., Altman, D., & Unit, I. S. (2015). Mobile applications for the health sector. Washington: World Bank, 2.

The rise in the use of smart mobile phones through the changing nature of the world necessitates the continuous involvement of health matters into technology. In modern times, human beings have been able to track their medical health record from their mobile phones. This aside, the use of tech gadgets such as the health monitor wrist band as well as the use of health applications to diagnose health conditions are among the emerging trends. According to Qiang et al. 2015, the challenges emanating from the rise of the use of mobile applications such as the integration and interoperability of the application with the rest of the mobile apps present a hardship for their implementations by most governments.

The article moves on to describe the different benefits that could be attained from the implementation of mobile health, such as increased care among patients. Patient tracking and its meaningful use in supply chain management present the advantages of quick customer service in terms of dispensing drugs in the pharmaceutical health field. The updates on the drug inventory could also be updated faster and with ease ensuring that the buffer stock does not run dry. Human services and utilities can also be made available from time to time by the use of mobile applications as information regarding health care, and services can be made available to these applications. This provides patients with easy access to various health services on both in-patient and outpatient terms.

Nursing Informatics

McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (Eds.). (2015). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

The current rise in technology has improved the methods by which human beings communicate. The integration of the new and advanced technology to nursing practice generates the large faculty of nursing informatics. This applies to exercises such as record keeping and information dissipation from time to time. However, from the work of McGonigle & Mastrian (2015), the suggestions brought forward include the practical training o competent nurses to serve as nursing informatics experts to handle the matters concerning health records. Other than this, given the criticality and vulnerability of the health records, the tampering and any information insecurity possessed by this type of technology might lead to massive loss of life. This means that there have to be proper communication channels in these informatics institutions.

Other than this, the people trained to serve as informatics experts may offer a critical contribution to the analysis of health data. This data and informatics experts may assist in the prediction and forecasting of supply chain deterioration both in the field and within the health premises in question. Further, the new nursing informatics and data analysis training should be carried out starting at the bachelor's level such that newcomers into the health sector may understand and learn to appreciate the contribution of information technology to the profession.

Conclusion

In general, the contribution of technology to the modern world is immense. The embrace for technology may assist in the faster dissipation of information and healthcare practices such as vaccinations or monitoring of chronic illnesses, among others. The security of the information, as well as the establishment of credibility and authenticity in the news and its sources before their transmission is essential. This is achieved through education and training, as suggested by McGonigle & Mastrian (2015). Competent nurses should also be defined by their ability to understand the contribution of technology and informatics to their professions to aid in the implementation of its use.

References

Rao-Gupta, S., Kruger, D., Leak, L. D., Tieman, L. A., & Manworren, R. C. (2018). Leveraging interactive patient care technology to improve pain management engagement. Pain Management Nursing, 19(3), 212-221. Retrieved from; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29249621

McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (Eds.). (2015). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge. Jones & Bartlett Publishers. Retrieved from; https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=nQy3DAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA329&dq=nursing+informatics&ots=dmw62sBl0v&sig=DkoIlKrWUPqh2IaXkOGndyYvUdk&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=nursing%20informatics&f=false

Qiang, C. Z., Yamamichi, M., Hausman, V., Altman, D., & Unit, I. S. (2015). Mobile applications for the health sector. Washington: World Bank, 2. Retrieved from; http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INFORMATIONANDCOMMUNICATIONANDTECHNOLOGIES/Resources/mHealth_report.pdf

Rajkumar, A., Oren, E., Chen, K., Dai, A. M., Hajaj, N., Hardt, M., ... & Sundberg, P. (2018). Scalable and accurate deep learning with electronic health records. NPJ Digital Medicine, 1(1), 18. Retrieved from; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-018-0029-1/

Mandel, J. C., Kreda, D. A., Mandl, K. D., Kohane, I. S., & Ramoni, R. B. (2016). SMART on FHIR: a standards-based, interoperable apps platform for electronic health records. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 23(5), 899-908.