Hospital healthcare information system

Cincinnati Children s Hospital Medical Center, the 2003 recipient of the prestigious Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society s (HIMSS) Nicholas E. Davies Award of Excellence for Electronic Health Record (eHR), was able to reduce medication errors by 35% and decrease medication turnaround time by 52% through the use of an integrated clinical information system. 

The AHFS Framework enables developers to easily embed drug content into pharmacy and clinical information systems. It can be used to rapidly integrate two respected drug knowledge bases the American Hospital Formulary Service (AHFS) Drug Information monographs, and First DataBank s NDDF Plus. Combined, they allow healthcare professionals to have seamless access to comprehensive drug information, within their usual work-flow systems. 

Confidentiality refers to how well private information is kept private, regardless of whether it is a patient, employee, or corporation. Information is available only to authorized persons, and none will be divulged to unauthorized individuals. This invokes the concept of security in the information system. In most cases, security is maintained in the system by introducing an appropriate user s I.D. and password format for each eligible user. Recent implementation of a federal law, the Hospital Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), has made it mandatory to insure stricter confidentiality measures in the healthcare system. A PACS should strictly meet this requirement. 

Another perceived problem of the late twentieth century was that physicians would be slow to adopt computers. Historically the physician has been the principal integrator of knowledge in healthcare. It was appreciated that it would take a great deal of persuading to convince skeptical, busy clinicians that after all the broken promises of the past two decades, that computers can simplify and strengthen their practices.The lack of trust is even more a problem with physicians than with patients. IT has sometimes been imposed on physicians by hospitals, health systems, or health plans. Vendors and information managers frequently encountered physicians fear that information systems will be used to profile them, gather information about their practices, discipline them, or deprive them of income. 

The wireless trend for medical information systems (ISs) and ITs has also moved beyond just mobile phones. For example, ambulances in Sweden have been equipped with mobile computing, wireless networks, and GPS. While in transit, patient vitals and the ambulance s GPS coordinates can be sent to the hospital, providing real-time status updates. Finland has set up a network where patient records, health consulting, and prescriptions can all be accessed by authorized individuals wirelessly on connected devices (Wu et al. 2007). While these advances are a net benefit for healthcare, there still exist hurdles that need to be considered, including how to best design and implement the mobile user applications interfaces. 

The American Hospital Association (AHA) is a national organization that represents and serves all types of hospitals, healthcare networks, and their patients and communities. Close to 5000 hospitals, healthcare systems, networks, other providers of care, and 37,000 individual members come together to form the AHA. Advocacy efforts include the legislative and executive branches and include the legislative and regulatory arenas. Founded in 1898, the AHA provides education for healthcare leaders and is a source of information on healthcare issues and trends. 

Health administration organizations (e.g., managed care organizations) would like to have medical information available for questions about eligibility for treatment. Delivery networks (e.g., hospitals) would like it to be available to the services within the system (clinical, administrative, and financial). Individual healthcare providers would like the record to be available as the... 

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