The Use of Information Technology in Healthcare Paper Example

Introduction

In the previous analysis, medical errors were highlighted as one of the main challenges facing the healthcare sector. Most of them were associated with poor diagnosis, errors in reading lab reports and giving the wrong prescription among others. The challenge affects many parts of the world and there is an urgent need to solve it in the most appropriate way. The general category of informatics that can help to reduce errors is the use of information technology. The clinical challenge can be solved by employing the latest information technology services. The category has a wide range of products that can be employed to ensure that the data used in making medical decisions is accurate and that errors are not made when giving prescriptions.

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Summary of benefits and rationale

The use of information technology will increase the efficiency of healthcare processes and reduce the number of errors experienced. The first benefits are that it will reduce human errors and increase the accuracy of the tests and conclusions made. When patients present their samples for testing, information technology services will be used to read and interpret the results by the use of the data fed into it (Luo, Wu, Gopukumar & Zhao, 2016). In such a way, the system will use the latest information and human errors will not affect the conclusion. The other benefit is that it will give several possible alternatives that could be causing the symptoms. Unlike humans, the information technology system will consider all possible outcomes and this will increase the accuracy of the medical process. The other one is that it decreases the possibilities of bias associated with humans. For example, doctors may have a prejudice about some races or minority groups of people and this affects their decision making (Hatzenbuehler, 2014). The use of information technology will reduce chances for such prejudice. The other benefit is that it will increase the accessibility that people have to their health records. The health records will be stored in the cloud services and can be accessed from anywhere. If the patients seek medical attention in a different hospital, their medical history will be accessible and this will improve the follow-up medication.

The other benefit is the improved communication among different healthcare specialists. The information about the diagnosis and lab results will be standard and easy to interpret, which will make it easy for all specialists to interpret it in the same way, unlike manual records which attract errors in meaning. It will also increase trust, privacy, and effectiveness of the treatment processes.

Legal and ethical issues

The use of information technology attracts several legal and ethical concerns. According to Korhonen, Nordman, and Eriksson (2015), nurses and doctors have to consider the privacy of the patients and the legal support that the technology attracts. The right to privacy is the main ethical issue, whereby the patient should have access to the data about their medical tests and the data should not be used or manipulated for any other use. However, the complex nature of technology makes it hard to assure the patients about this privacy. The legal structures fail to give adequate guidance ion the collection, analysis of medical data using this technology. Loss of data is likely and it may be difficult to pursue legal suits. The legal and ethical concerns slow down its implementation in most healthcare centers and reduce the trust that people have in it.

References

Hatzenbuehler, M. L. (2014). Structural stigma and the health of lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(2), 127-132.

Korhonen, E. S., Nordman, T., & Eriksson, K. (2015). Technology and its ethics in nursing and caring journals: An integrative literature review. Nursing Ethics, 22(5), 561-576.

Luo, J., Wu, M., Gopukumar, D., & Zhao, Y. (2016). Big data application in biomedical research and health care: a literature review. Biomedical informatics insights, 8, BII-S31559.