The healthcare sector has seen many technological advancements, but none has impacted patient safety, like “Health Information Technology”. The use of medication notifications, clinical alerts and prompts, better recording and documentation of appointments and diagnostic tests, clinical decision support, and the accessibility of comprehensive patient data can enhance patient safety. Data obtained through the usage of health Information Technology can be used to assess the effectiveness of treatment approaches and has been shown to enhance medical practice.
Various systems, ranging from basic charting to more sophisticated decision support and connectivity with medical equipment, are included in health information technology. For instance, Record consistency is used by many healthcare facilities to minimize practice differences, carry out periodic quality assurance assessments, and enhance evidence-based treatment for common ailments. It offers numerous alternatives for enriching and modifying healthcare, including reducing human error rates, improving clinical outcomes, and allowing care communication between different providers. This is something we didn’t have before health information technology advanced to what it is today.
Patients are becoming more active healthcare consumers thanks to health IT. They are urged to fully engage in collective decision-making by accessing patient information, which makes them feel more informed about their health. It also helps them make conscious decisions on whether to take certain medical actions, such as surgeries.
“Recent electronic health record software development has made it possible for telemedicine to work as well,” says the ehr software development lead for EffectiveSoft. “Telemedicine uses internet technology to enable interactions between patients and providers or between providers. Clinical data about the patient may be transmitted asynchronously or synchronously via real-time, two-way video communication.”
Telemedicine can also deliver health data that has been remotely gathered from medical equipment or private mobile devices. Patients’ responses may be tracked, monitored, or changed using this information. According to a recent publication by MedNews, one of the biggest concerns about Health Information Technology is the safety of the data. Of course, like many recent technological adoptions, it has benefits and concerns. System breaches can occur if the healthcare center does not invest properly in cyber security. It is up to the providers to install firewalls and other protective measures that help prevent such ordeals. Nonetheless, the positive impact of health Information Technology is undeniable, as depicted by most studies. Health Information Technology is beneficial not only to healthcare providers but also to patients.