Group items tagged

At the NHS in England, hospitals are using these new "IT programme" telling them to start labeling their patients. In 2006 approximately 25,000 patients were saying that they they weren't given the right treatment. These were cases due to the misreading of the patient's tags, papers and other identification papers.(These misreadings were due to the legibility of the handwriting. Then the idea of barcodes and RFID were introduced this February by the UK healthcare manager, Roger Lamb who is now using this NHS 10 digit patient ID number and RFID tags which will modernize the NHS hospital in England. RFID's will be upon their wristband which will contain all their personal records (there will also be a photograph if the patient is unable to speak). This can only be accessed by the doctors from his/her PDA. 2.4_health 3.1_hardware: RFID and 10 digit barcodes 3.7_databases: that holds patient's records (Keep in mind this article was written in 2007.)

This article is about the idea of putting all existing medical records into electronic form. This would cut the costs needed for storage of such information, this would also increase how fast a medical official can access the records of a sick patient. However, as listed in Strand 1, there are many positive and negative social/ethical issues. One such issue is security. By making the records digitized and put into the hospital database, people without the proper authorization would not be able to gain access to the data. This can also coincide with authenticity. The information that relates to the patient should be accessible by the patient. The patient would need to be able to get through the encryption of the data. Another social/ethical issue would be the equality of access, this would allow only certain people the ability to look at the data. Even with these positive social/ethical issues there are some negative issue. One negative issue would be integrity. There are people who can hack the encryption of this data and tamper with it. This would cause the data to be different in other places and a breach in security. This would be a great help to organizing data. Using a paper file system, the doctor would have to go through a lot of papers and cabinets to find the patient's medical history. By using a paper file cabinet documents are more likely to go missing or get mixed up with another patient's records. However, by using a database this data is much more organized. There is a smaller chance of losing the patient's data, by using back-ups the data could be easily restored. There is also a much smaller change or mixing up multiple patient's data. If the wrong data was use for the wrong person, the person may not have the correct medical treatment they need. With databases the information is much more organized. The patient's data can be found very fast, compared to a paper file system (this could take more than an hour depending on the amount of patients).

Continued...The hardware involved with creating databases in the health industry would be a DBMS Engine. This is also known as a Database Managing System. This takes the logical request from DBMS subsystems and converts them to physical equivalents. This also requires interactive processing. This replaces batch processing. This allows users to interact with data through terminals and view values online in real time. By having real time the doctors can give the patients what they need at the moment the patient needs it. The stakeholders in this specific case would be the hospitals adapting the database managing system and the patients whose information is stored in this database. If the database is tampered and there are not back-ups the patient would not have his/her medical history. This could cause the patient to be on a delay for an operation that is extremely important to their life. This could also place a lawsuit on the hospital.

In looking at this article and the other articles that I have post The main It IT system is a database to store the medical records of the patients of doctors. In theory this would be great for everyone. There will be less paper waste, and it would be easier to pull up patient information at the doctor's office. Its true potential can be achieved if each doctor's database can be connected to created to create a network so any doctor can access the patients information nationally or internationally. The primary issue however, is that the doctors have no standard. Some doctors are not willing to make a transfer because there are to many implications to actually becoming all digital. So that is the issue, since there are no standard the doctors are not willing to adapt. Now this issue can affect a number of stakeholder's. The doctors can see the benefits and draw backs of this standard issue. The doctor's who adopt EHR, actually save a lot of money in the long run, and are on better terms with insurance companies, in the cases where doctors don't use EHR and if a standard is developed they will suffer for it. They will not be able to process patient information quickly, and be on bad terms with insurance companies, and the U.S government(since the government wants to only have EHR or EMR). If a standard is not developed its the patient that will suffer the most. In this world that that we live in International travel is a common place, many people can get injured abroad a EMR can give life saving information to the doctors from the foreign country. This article displays the particular benefits of EMR, the article above me is the reasons doctors do not want to adopt to EMR, and the article before mine displays the governments interest to change all the paper records to EMR.

This article is primarily about setting standards and protocols so that an electronic health records could world easily and securely for many health care providers and suppliers. The reason the introduction of an EHR hasn't worked before, is that there were no data-sharing standards, which would ensure that the data is transmitted securely across the internet. These standards are also in accordance of many of the interests of all of the health providers and stakeholders involved, which was a major problem previously. Without the issue of connecting the EHR from provider to provider, then the records would be a "fancy...way to capture data," and it's full potential would never be recognized. However, these new standards and protocols, filled with secure transactions based on encryptions, have made the introduction of an electronic health record possible. There are many benefits to the use of an EHR, including productivity and financial improvement for the companies and the employees. For example, doctors/nurses no longer need to spend time pulling a patient's file, or writing the details of the visit afterwards. There are also fewer repetitive tasks, and improved communication between doctor and nurse, or doctor and another doctor. Quality of care may also improve because doctors have quick access to a patient's information, there is better monitoring and discovery of chronic illnesses, and doctors can return phone calls/ provide medication refills immediately. Also, in general, the electronic charts allow for a more efficient office, which leads to a less stressful environment and more attention on the patients' care rather than searching for their charts. This can only be done through the introduction of an EHR, leading to easier queries, instant reorganization, and file management that could be transmitted to both the patient and any other doctors. This minimizes the ambiguity of not having tests results from one doctor, and allows all doctors treating a p

patient to see all of the patient's history. This is important in having a correct diagnosis and treatment. However, there are also some drawbacks. Initially, doctors who chose to engage in the implementation of a EHR, see some decreases in productivity. This is because entering information and learning how to use the software takes some time. Some doctors also do not have the money to invest in such software and accompanying hardware to, and others no not want to because they are accustomed to their hand-written charts. There are also some security issues, leading to greater privacy issues. The EHR maintains very personal data about a patient, and if the records are breached, then the privacy of the patient may be put at risk. There is also the issue of interoperability, which was brought up in the article. Many of the companies in different countries wishing to engage in the implementation of EHR have different standards involving the usage. This could harm the usage of an international EHR.

There is now a standard messaging protocol that allows health facilities to communicate any type of health records to each other, instantly, so any doctor that needs the data to his patient, has his own access to his health network, and thus his patient benefits to instant help.

This news article talks about the new rules that are focused around EHR. The situation is that despite the push toward "electronic health records by Washington, the transition toward EHR still has a long way to go." Last year, the American Medical Association estimated that there were over 800,000 physicians in the U.S., said Practice Fusion, which offers a free Web-based system to doctors. But only 6.3 percent of them said they had a fully functional electronic medical records system in place. There was and attempt to resolve this by these rules. The government is hoping to clarify the conditions under which doctors and hospitals can collect payments by investing in electronic health records, or EHR, for the next few years. Calling the rules a "significant milestone," General Electric said they include important changes that make the objectives for incentive payments more realistic for medical providers. The exact rules that are going into place are: "One of the rules, issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, defines the "meaningful use" objectives that medical professionals must meet to qualify for the payments. The goal of this rule is to provide greater flexibility by offering a menu of different objectives and procedures that providers can choose from to qualify. The other rule, issued by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, defines the standards that must be met by EHR technology so medical providers are confident that the equipment they use will actually perform all the required functions."

A rather long, but interesting story about search engine results ranking. The J.C. Penney case.