Thursday, 15 May 2014

Information Systems in Healthcare

By: Benxa Zingisa (789715)

Information systems in healthcare exist to capture, store, process and communicate timely information to decision makers for better coordination of healthcare at both the individual and population. The role of information systems in healthcare involves the monitoring of errors, and the monitoring of private information about a patient’s health.

Those in healthcare organizations must pay a closer look to detail. They have the responsibility to maintain, update and secure all of a patient’s healthcare information.

Our lives are at a stake of life and death. Therefore, healthcare information systems influences the quality of our lives and how we do in society. Errors that occur in medical centres are more likely than not that they can affect our lives permanently in such a way that one could be disabled and not be able to engage in things, such as sport or go to work rather. Our social lives could change even. The cause would be the result of medical errors in healthcare organisations and could possibly cost our lives.

At the population level, the failure to control infectious diseases can cause public health issues. Therefore, healthcare quality is highly recommended and is closely looked at, and information systems can facilitate such pursuit by highlighting and monitoring errors of various stages along the continuum of care.

Healthcare information is highly confidential. As a result, any transfer of information via technology involves risks, both perceived or actual and the information could end up to the wrong people. Although securing information electronically can be an advantage, it could also be a disadvantage because it has a likelihood of leakage, as a result media can get hold of the health information of other people.

In conclusion, information systems have a potential to reduce healthcare costs and improve outcomes and people’s health has improved drastically because healthcare centres are keeping up with the ever changing technology or systems.                                                                       


References:
 Fichman, Kohli, and Krishnan: Editorial overview Information Systems research 22(3), pp.419-428, ©2011 INFORMS



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