In the past decades, health care providers have made a growing use of information and communication technologies in their daily practice.

 

 

 

 

 

Health information technologies take various forms, including:

 

• electronic health records;

• personal health records;

• e-mail communication;

• clinical alerts and reminders ;

• computerized decision support systems;

• hand-held devices;

• any technology that store, protect, retrieve and transfer clinical, administrative, and financial information electronically within health care settings (http://www.hrsa.gov/healthit/ ).

 

The benefits of health IT

Expectations towards health IT are great:

 

• Improved monitoring of chronically ill patients;

• Continuity in patient treatment with the help of electronic patient files;

• Improved home care due to more user friendly and portable devices;

• Less visits to the doctor’s office or to the emergency room;

• Reduction of medical errors.

 

What is at stake?

But they also raise several concerns such as:

 

• Confidentiality since health organisations have to ensure that electronic health records remain totally confidential;

• Responsibility and empowerment since patients are given more responsibilities in the management of their diseases;

• Training and education of health professionals who are now required to master computer skills;

• Changes in the work organisation in hospitals and other facilities to support the use of certain health IT;

• Interoperability of health IT systems . Interoperability means information systems of two hospitals for example will be have to be able to « talk » to each other and exchange information ;

• Data legibility since data stored now will have to be legible by new softwares in a few years time ;

• Increased Data storage space to accommodate technologies such MRI, CT Scan, electronic patient files etc.;

• Obsolescence of devices and systems since the short life span of health IT may imply frequent replacement and consequently an additional economic burden on the health care system;

• The usability of health IT for people with specific disabilities, elderly or people with low level of literacy may be questioned ;

• Adoption of health IT by health professionals, if slow, may put an additional burden on the healthcare system.

 

Our dossier this month, examines two different health IT: the Intelligent Distance Patient Monitoring and the computerized respiratory assistance device. It also explores the socioeconomics issues around telemedicine and two telemedicine homecare systems for patients with chronic illnesses.

 

 

 

November 14, 2008 By: pboinot Category: Tech. de l'information, Les technologies de l'information et la santé