Health Care IT Systems - Essay Example

Business Competiveness and Performance Effectiveness for Health Care IT Systems Fundamental Responsibilities of CIO and CTO in heath care organizations: The main function of the CIO (Chief Information Officer) to solve the problems related to Information Technology for the top level management in health care organization. They are responsible for monitoring and assuring the communication channels of the health care organization. They mainly deal with the security, up gradation and other functions to manage the Information Technology of the health care center. They maintain the Information technology of the health care organization after its implementing in the organization. Else ways, CTO (Chief Technology Officer) is an Information Technology designer to build IT infrastructure in the health care organization. They are responsible of creating and implementing of new IT technologies in the heath care center, to make communication channels smoothly. They analyses the requirement of the heath care center and create plans and process to implement the Information Technology. CTO have good analyzing power related to Information Technology and tells the top management of the organization in which area they are lacking and how should be improved their work by implementing new Information Technology. Recommendation: Both CIO and CTO can assist the staffs and patient of heath care center by creating strong IT infrastructure in electronic medical records. For example; electronic medical records help the both staffs and patient to track their records and transaction over internet. It saves time of both parties and can communicate with each others. Two developing technologies that health care should improve in their process: 1. The health care organization should improve in their billing system by implementing Information Technology. It will aids them minimize the errors during transaction between hospitals and patients. Even, the staffs of the health care organization can easily maintain the records of their patient. It will minimize the data redundancy. 2. The medical records should be in electronic form, so the patients and physicians can monitors the records over internet and can consult with other physicians and medical staffs. It will aid them to track the medical records of their patient. Even, electronic medical records save time of both parties. The patient can easily consult with their desire doctor with help of electronic medical records and the doctor can easily track down the past medical records of the patient. Information Technology in health care center will saves a lot of time for the physicians and staffs. This will reduce the miscommunication among the doctors and medical staffs. It will enhance the work flow of health care center and reduces the extra work forces, like a mediator between a doctor and a patient regarding billing process or medical records. Information Technology will create better quality of work and reduce the wastages of money. It will save a lot of time to maintaining and creating medical records and billing system. Significant methods to prevent misuse of information and protect data privacy: The loss of medical records of any patient is very critical and unwanted situation in the health care center. A loss of medical records, the physicians and medical staffs have to bear lot of troubles. Since, a medical record during emergency period, tells the conditions of physical or mental state and history of the patient in aspect of medical issues like his or her blood group, allergy and lots more. These factors are important for the health care center, when they are dealing with the patient. So, the health care center cannot bear the loss of medical records of their patient. To protect this, the health care system should create a backup of all data related to patient and their transaction, even more they should keep and maintain the all relevant data regarding the health care center as a backup. If data storage system of the heath care center were crashed or stolen by the hackers, then the data backup would be useful to retrieve old data. Another method to protect the data and information is hardware based security solution. There is software based protecting system, which prevents from virus and malwares usually used by hackers to steal the data, whereas in hardware based security solution helps to protect the data from unauthorized users. It protects the data by read only access for unauthorized users (Waksman & Sethumadhavan, 2011). It is a strong protection method to save data. So the unauthorized user cannot able to hamper the data and information related to the health care centers. Strategy for health care organization to train provider in using technology in health care: There huge differences between medical professional and IT professional. The physicians and medical staffs have knowledge related to their filed only. However, now a day many health care centers implemented Information Technology to enhance their work flow and minimize the errors. It is necessary for all physician and medical staffs to learn Information Technology, to make their work much faster and better. So, the health care organizations are providing training to their physicians and medical staffs to make them efficient with Information Technology. For this, the health care organizations are conducting proper training to their physicians and medical staffs by bringing professional coaches; those have knowledge of Information Technology. This professional are very expert in their field and share knowledge regarding the Information Technology with physicians and medical staffs and tell them the utilization of Information Technologies in medical field and how it will make their work more efficient. First, the professionals teach them about the basics of Information Technology like working with MS Office Tools and emailing. Then they teach them about the functions of the software, which are used by health care centers like how to operate electronic medical records, creating and maintaining of data etc. Via this coaching strategy, the medical professional will able to use Information Technology in their functions and make their work easier than past.  Best practices for effective IT alignment and strategic planning initiatives: 1. Minimize Work Load: A good IT alignment and strategic planning in the health care center will minimize the work load of physicians and medical staffs. The all work will auto generated like billing, medical records of patients and many more. There will be no manual work, which takes more times. It also saves time of physicians and medical staffs. Even though, the patient can book appoint with relevant doctors via online and save their time too. 2. Cost Effective: The Information Technology will reduce the overall expenses of the health care center. It will minimize the extra work force like assistants and peons in the health care organization. Electricity and other facilities in the health care center can be monitored via Information Technology and reduced the extra expenses in this. The electricity bills, water bills and other bills of the health care organization can be paid via online; it will save time and extra work too. The raw materials or contacting with suppliers for medical facilities can be done over the internet. Booking a bed for patient can be done via online and save time too. 3. Error Free: Information Technology in the health care organization will reduce the errors like data entry or creating and maintaining the records of patients. The data redundancy will be minimized while updating track of records of the health care organization regarding billing of patients, salary of medical staffs and many more. It also aids the health care centers to monitor their physicians and medicals staffs, in case of emergency they can contact them. The administration of the heath care centers can monitor and maximize the overall performance of their medical staffs. References: Nøhr, C., & Aarts, J. (2010). Information technology in health care (1st ed.). Amsterdam: IOS Press. Marcinko, D., & Hetico, H. (2007). Dictionary of health information technology and security (1st ed.). New York: Springer Pub. Westbrook, J. (2007). Information technology in health care 2007 (1st ed.). Amsterdam: IOS Press. Read More