Healthcare essay
In the 21st century, there appeared a number of problems in the health systems around the world, solutions of which are in the plane of information technology. Huge arrays of various data, mainly in paper form, are hardly treatable and analyzed; paper work distracts doctors from performing their basic duties, and therefore reduces the effectiveness of medical care in general. Besides, the lack of information links between medical institutions required a patient to the start medical records in each clinic and diagnostic center, where he was treated. Paper medical records, in addition to everything else, don’t ensure data privacy. All these, as well as the demands of society to improve the quality of health services (especially acutely manifested in countries with prevalence of health insurance), led the most developed countries to the need to integrate modern IT technologies in the health care system (Jepsen, 2010).
The most widely used so-called “electronic health record” (EHR), are usually implemented on basis of cloud technologies. Electronic medical record (EMR) allows you to transfer all the data into a digital format, after which they are placed on a secure server. Replacing paper to electronic medical records allows the access to patient records by authorized medical personnel, both at a single institution (local access) and at the level of the entire country’s health system (global access). In the latter case, the patient doesn’t need to start medical records in every medical facility, as a cloud EMC is available at the place of requirement (Smyth, 2011).
Improvement of information system allows replacing traditional “physical registry” to email. Judging by the latest data, clouds cope with assigned duties quite well. So, US hospitals, which use EHR, need less time and significantly reduce the time of patients’ stay in the emergency room. This was reported in the study of Associate Professor of the University of Arizona Michael Furukawa, who studied the impact of IT – technology to work of ambulance.
There are interesting results of a survey of 3,700 doctors from eight countries, conducted by Accenture. 70.9 % of respondents believe that information technology in medicine improve access to quality data needed to conduct clinical trials; 69.1% see the benefits of health IT in improving coordination of medical care; two-thirds of respondents noted reduction of the number of medical errors (Tompkins, 2013).
A positive example of introduction of “medical clouds” was contagious. In the short term, experts predict that medical facilities will be more willing to turn to the cloud for storage of medical data, the volume of which is growing. There will be gradual acceleration of the transition from local information systems that include one or more medical facilities, to global regional systems of DIRAYA type, which today are not so spread. Just recently, the UK government announced its intention to create a global information system by 2015 that allows safe and prompt move and process of information on the country’s health. It is expected that the volume of investments in the health care system will increase. All this suggests that the health system will introduce new information technology, and information system will improve healthcare.
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