Trends in Health Information Systems and Applications

 

Assume the role of a lead person on a technology advisory committee at a large regional medical center.

The medical center has struggled with ongoing problems related errors surrounding patient medication, misplaced lab results and delays in updating patient charts. Physicians complain that they must often make their rounds with incomplete or delayed patient information. At the same time, the nursing staff has expressed concerned with incomplete or incorrect orders from physicians and that lab and radiology orders are difficult to track. Nurses also complain that nursing assistants make frequent errors in properly recording patient vitals. To make matters worse, the administration is deeply concerned about an increase in the number of critical incidences related to incorrectly medicated patients.

The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is confident that many of the problems could be alleviated if healthcare professionals were better able to access and leverage information systems anytime, anywhere, and preferably nearest to the point of patient care. Accordingly, the CTO has tasked you and the advisory committee with drafting an excutive summary outlining what relevant technology solutions are available, along with recommendations of how they should be used to correct the ongoing problems, increase efficiencies and improve the overall quality of patient care. The CTO also advises that the committees report will be presented to the board of directors, so she recommends that the overview and recommendations be supported with case examples from other healthcare institutions.
Remember, the board is comprised of busy healthcare and management executives that do not have a great deal of technical knowledge related to information technology systems. Accordingly, keep your summary informative but concise, and also target it at the executive management level.

• Identification of current and emerging technology systems and devices useful for overcoming day-to-day information and communications challenges in various healthcare setting.
• Your ability to describe the relevance of wireless technology, related applications and devices, and explain its impact on patient care.
• Explanations surrounding implementation of new technologies as applied to healthcare environments in additional to discussion related to their potential benefits and risks.
• Presentation of your approach used to identify and asses the viability of the information and technology systems you recommend in your paper.

• The purpose of each assignment is for you to present your understanding and synthesis of the background material and key concepts. Accordingly, this must be accomplished substantially in your own words.
• Use directly quoted material sparingly and only when preserving the exact words of an author is necessary. For purposes of this course, rarely should directly quoted material represent more than 5-10 percent of your entire case paper’s content. Composing a paper patched together from mostly quoted material is not acceptable.
• Be sure to properly reference all directly quoted material and include the in-text citations.