It Application in Health Care

Introduction:

After surfing for hours online, I have come across several interesting literatures that deal with the four core IT applications. I was overwhelmed by so much information that I couldn't even decide which literature to choose. But alas, I have come across a litereature entitled Patient Safety: The Role of Information Technology . I was quite exstatic after I read this article because this is one of the project my organization is trying to integrate in our clinical system. Since I work and sometimes also a patient of my organization, I am quite aware of the impact of Information Technology on patient's safety. And I was hoping that by doing this report, I could gain a little insight on how the use of Information Technology improve the safety of medical patients.

Summary:

This article discusses the role of information technology (IT) in the reduction of

medical errors and the improvement of patient safety. The discussion begins with a

overview of the relationship between healthcare information technology and

patient safety. Then the article discusses the evidence for known relationships between the use of information technology and the improvement of patient safety. The literature closes with a discussion of three critical issues which must be addressed in order to successfully leverage information technology to improve patient safety. The three issues are patient medical record information modeling and codification, interoperable clinical computing, and clinical decision support. Basically this literature is divided

into three parts: 1) a review of the relationship between IT and patient safety in the inpatient and outpatient clinical care environments, 2) a summary of a systems analysis of sources of medical errors, and 3) a summary of safety issues and solutions in selected other industries.

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