The Growing Significance of Health Information Technology
From anesthetics and antibiotics to MRI scanners and radiotherapy, health information technology (HIT) is transforming patient care in unprecedented ways. Customized healthcare applications, medical practice management software, remote patient monitoring technology, and other health information systems in hospitals, clinics, and medical facilities allow healthcare providers to stay relevant and competent amidst the waves of change.
“Information is the lifeblood of medicine and health information technology is destined to be the circulatory system for that information.”
– David Blumenthal
With a fair understanding of the key applications and role of information technology in healthcare, physicians, hospital networks, medical practitioners, and caregivers can successfully leverage health IT to reduce costs and improve the overall quality and effectiveness of patient care and experience.
What is Information Technology in Healthcare?
Health Information Technology (HIT or HCIT) is a key segment of healthcare as well as IT that involves the design, development, implementation, usage, and maintenance of information systems and software solutions for the healthcare industry.
Information technology in healthcare encompasses a wide range of functions, including and not limited to:
- Health information management across computing devices and platforms for hospitals, clinics, healthcare providers, and other medical centers
- Secure exchange of health information between consumers, providers, payers, insurers, and quality monitors
- Hardware and software solutions used to store, retrieve, share, and analyze healthcare information, medical data, and knowledge for seamless communication and decision-making
- Healthcare software used to manage daily clinical operations and administrative tasks, improve efficiency, and reduce costs and errors
- Remote/ virtual health monitoring and consulting solutions, medical mobile apps, online medical records, wearables, and self-management tools to facilitate personalized care
Current State of Global Healthcare Information Technology Market
- Market size as of 2022: $394.6 billion
- Estimated value by 2027: $974.5 billion
- Projected Compound Annual Growth Rate: 19.8%
- Key market drivers: e-prescribing, telehealth, mHealth, and other HCIT solutions
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Types of Health Information Technology
Health information technology collectively refers to the different types of software systems used by healthcare professionals, care providers, and sometimes patients, to store, share, and analyze health information. There are different types of Health IT systems.
#1Electronic Health Records (EHR)
EHRs or electronic medical record (EMR) systems are used to document and store a patient’s medical information, such as their health reports, diagnosis results, allergies, laboratory charges, treatment history, and so on.
Benefits of using EHR/ EMR systems:
- Medical practitioners can quickly access a patient’s EMR using a mobile or computer
- Physicians can easily share data across different departments to provide quick and accurate treatment
- Digital creation and management of health records eliminate tedious paperwork and reduce the errors caused by manual documentation
- Easy to avoid medical errors since the same kind of health information is shared across all departments
#2Medical Practice Management Systems
Medical practice management software is used to manage the different administrative and clinical aspects of your practice such as handling the documents pertaining to your facility, scheduling appointments, billing and payments, report generation, insurance eligibility verification, and other day-to-day tasks.
Benefits of medical practice management software:
- Automate routine clerical tasks such as scheduling appointments, billing & payment processing, claims administration, and other related procedures for managing your facility
- Streamline the workflow for doctors and clinical staff, so that they can spend more time with their patients and less time on administrative tasks
- Automate the process of stocking and distributing medical inventory and tracking the products dispensed to patients
- Generate detailed clinical performance reports to analyze the financial health of your medical practice and take the next steps to improve your cash flow
#3E-prescribing Software
Doctors can use the e-prescribing software to generate and share prescriptions with their patients online or send the prescriptions directly to the pharmacy in just a few clicks. This saves the time and effort for both the patient as well as the pharmacist.
Benefits of e-prescribing software:
- Eliminates the need to create handwritten notes by generating legible prescriptions online
- Avoids mix-up, loss, or misplacement of prescriptions and ensures the pharmacist supplies the right medicines to the patient
- Makes it easier to track a patient's medication history with the help of a pharmacy’s database
#4Remote Patient Monitoring Tools
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is a kind of homecare telehealth that allows patients or their bystanders to use wearables or mobile medical devices to gather patient-generated health data and send it to healthcare professionals for virtual monitoring and diagnosis.
Examples of remote patient monitoring technology:
- Glucometers for patients with diabetes
- IoT-based surveillance monitors to locate patients with critical conditions like dementia and alert healthcare professionals in case of an event like a fall
- Blood pressure monitors and heart rate monitors
- Post-operative cardiac monitoring devices for homecare
- Smart watches and wrist brands to track daily exercise routines and caloric intake
#5Medical Billing Software
Medical billing software consists of tools that simplify billing-related workflows for healthcare facilities. It helps handle invoicing tasks, patient billing, insurance coverage verification and claims processing, patient demographics, creation of financial reports, and more.
Benefits of medical billing software:
- Facilitates proper information storage, reduces time-consuming paperwork, and increases convenience for the clinic staff and patients
- Streamlines clinical and administrative processes, improves staff productivity, and provides faster turnaround times for claims processing
- Improves overall clinical process efficiency by automating the steps involved in billing & invoicing, payment reminders, information management, claims, and reimbursements
Benefits of IT in the Healthcare Industry
The ultimate goal of information technology in healthcare is to enhance the overall health of the population by improving the quality of care that patients receive. Applying information technology in healthcare offers a lot of benefits.
- Provides healthcare professionals with accurate, actionable, and accessible information related to their patients’ health
- Facilitates enhanced communication and shared decision-making between patients and healthcare providers
- Accurate maintenance and update of medical data and patient history across multiple platforms will reduce costly medical errors
- Up-to-date health information management ensures that every patient gets access to personalized care and treatment
- Enables faster and more informed decisions concerning health-related risks
- Healthcare applications provide easier access to explicit care guidelines and physician-recommended treatments
- Allows nursing professionals to focus more on the care they provide thereby reducing the chances for medical negligence
- Expands the collaboration between medical professionals by minimizing errors and miscommunication
- Better medication management and easier access for patients to their medical records
- Helps build social support networks for both patients as well as healthcare professionals
- Improves awareness among patients as well as the general public about health-related matters that can lead to positive outcomes
Web Application for Health Insurance Decision Makers: A Case Study
In a world of complex and ever-changing healthcare dynamics, health insurance decision-makers often find themselves caught in a web of challenges. Casenet, a leading provider of population health technology solutions in the US sought a dependable ally- a tool that would empower them to sustain their business, optimize day-to-day operations, and unearth untapped user segments.
Fingent emerged as the transformative force, turning their struggles into resounding triumphs with the advent of TruCare Insights. This cutting-edge web application became the catalyst for empowering decision-makers with real-time insights and robust analytics. Seamlessly integrating with their existing systems, TruCare Insights revolutionized the management and exploration of data. It unveiled a suite of action-oriented dashboards and management tools, allowing leaders to monitor operations and streamline team workflows. The result was a powerful transformation.
- Real-time insights and analytics empowered decision-makers to make well-informed choices.
- Enhanced focus on the specific requirements of healthcare payer organizations.
- A user-friendly interface enabled seamless data exploration and analysis.
- Substantial increase in new sales was achieved.
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Uses of Information Technology in Healthcare
Information technology is being used in numerous ways to improve patient safety, healthcare delivery, and communication between healthcare providers and patients.
Patient Records and Data Management
Digital management of patient data prevents important health information from getting lost, damaged, or misinterpreted. Health information technology applications enable healthcare professionals to manage patient data securely in a centralized location. A medical professional can add pharmacy records, X-rays, test results, and even vital signage to the virtual patient charts that are easy to read, share, analyze, and preserve for future reference.
Nursing Informatics
Nursing informatics is a fast-growing field in healthcare that combines patient care with data and technology to improve the quality of care, patient experience, and outcomes. In simple terms, nursing informatics specialists work with EHR systems and patient data management solutions to collect, analyze, optimize, and maintain patient data and build important reports for clinicians to make data-driven decisions.
Medical Data Collection and Research
Using health information technology applications such as EHRs, patient/ disease registries, discharge summaries, health surveys, and hospital databases, medical researchers can collect relevant data that will help them produce new medicines and design new types of treatments and conduct clinical trials. However, researchers gathering personal health information should obtain the required permission from data owners, adhere to data compliance regulations, and anonymize data samples before putting them into actual use.
Prevention and Control of Pandemic Epidemics
Digital health technologies play an important role in curbing the spread and impact of global pandemics like COVID-19. Health information technology aids in understanding the nature of diseases, improving diagnostic tools, and controlling the spread of infection on a larger scale. Telehealth systems, contact tracing apps, remote health monitoring tools, medical analytics, and online health surveys help control the spread of the infection, monitor outbreaks and their extent, and keep medical professionals and patients safe while providing continued care.
Monitor Patient Compliance
Remote patient monitoring tools, such as medical mobile apps, wearables, fitness apps, and custom healthcare applications for tracking conditions such as diabetes and oncology allow physicians to keep tabs on bed-ridden or homebound patients who need to be checked on more frequently. Instant feedback and suggestions from doctors enable the monitoring of patient compliance in real-time, especially by community pharmacists or home nurses who can make timely interventions to keep the patient safe and healthy.
Role of information technology in healthcare:
- Patient data management
- Health information exchange
- Reduce medical errors
- Protect patient privacy
- Enhance clinical decision-making
- Validate and process insurance claims
- Improve patient care and experience
- Ensure accuracy in test reports and diagnosis
- Prevent adverse drug reactions
Top Health Information Technology Trends
#1Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)
- Devices and networks that enable telemedicine and virtual care
- Remote patient monitoring devices to observe patients with chronic conditions in their homes
- Wearable or on-body IoMT devices that are connected to a person's body and record medical information about them, such as heart rate or blood pressure
- Glucose monitoring and calorie intake tracking mobile apps on patients’ smartphones
#2Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality solutions allow both healthcare professionals and patients to interact with highly-personalized simulated environments.
- 3D models and simulated virtual environments for anatomy learning and improving medical social skills
- Simulation of medical procedures, emergency cases, and medical equipment training
- Practice and train surgeons by conducting mock-surgeries in a virtual operating room
- Immersive VR simulations and gamified experiences for patients to alleviate chronic pains as well as mental stress and anxiety
- Inspiring and engaging VR-powered sessions to aid physical therapies and exercises as well as cognitive and neuro rehabilitation
#3Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality services are becoming more accessible and affordable in healthcare due to their versatility. They can be used for medical imaging, medical education, dentistry, and nurses’ training, providing an engaging and immersive learning experience.
- AR-enabled virtualized training provides medical practitioners with deeper insights into the nuances of body functions
- AR-based data visualization tools enable medical R&D teams to expedite the study of genetic data related to specific microbes
- AR helps create digital models of complicated surgeries including multiple sub-steps and critical deviations requiring careful analysis and planning
- 3D medical imaging, real-time access of patient data from EMRs, precise symptom detection, and collaborative surgeries
- Operating suite preparation, accurate vein visualization on the patient’s arm, dental learning and practice, and immersive medical training
#4Artificial Intelligence
AI software development is transforming healthcare by leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve diagnosis accuracy, predict outcomes, and reduce medical errors. AI can enhance personalized medicine and drug discovery, providing new opportunities for improving patient outcomes.
- AI in medical diagnostics helps unlock massive amounts of clinical data to boost medical diagnosis
- Allows doctors and caregivers to detect potentially life-threatening ailments at more treatable stages
- Reduces diagnostic errors and suggests the best practices for post-surgical care, patient discharge, medications, and follow-up checks
- Helps streamline drug research and discovery, and reduces the time-to-market for new drugs
- AI algorithms run behind self-health monitoring devices such as wearables, activity trackers, pedometers, smartwatches, and other physical fitness monitoring gadgets to derive in-depth insights on patient health
#5Cloud Adoption in Healthcare
Healthcare-compliant cloud platforms offer a robust and flexible foundation for rapid development and testing of new software platforms.
- Unified view of patient profile and records by pulling together data from different hospital systems
- Facilitates collaborative decision-making by integrating data across the care continuum
- Fosters remote collaboration between healthcare providers, care systems, staff, and patients
- Healthcare leaders can unlock the value of data generated along the patient journey, from the hospital to the home
- Flexibility for healthcare providers to scale up or down as demands evolve, without being locked into fixed capital expenses or investing in new systems
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Key Considerations for Implementing Information Technology in Healthcare
Crucial steps for the successful implementation of health information technology:
- Identify existing problems as well as areas for improvement in your healthcare practice or organization.
- Find out if the health information technology you’re considering is capable of tackling the problem.
- Involve and get the buy-in of different professional stakeholder groups, such as doctors, nurses, clinical and administrative staff, managers, senior management, and other strategic leaders in your organization.
- Commit adequate time and resources to define your business case, evaluate various HIT providers, contact their references, and review the healthcare technology solutions they’ve built in the past.
- Decide whether you need an off-the-shelf standardized solution or a home-grown customized healthcare software. While commercial systems may appear cheaper to purchase, they are not customized to individual organizations, which will increase your future overheads.
- It’s always advisable to build a customized healthcare system for your organization that will fulfill a range of requirements on a variety of levels. Tailor-made healthcare software systems ensure a careful balance between affordability and desired functionality.
- Decide how to prioritize the implementation of functionality that can bring benefits to the maximum number of end-users at the earliest stage itself.
- Focus on developing the right infrastructure for your healthcare technology application in order to ensure improved usability and performance.
- Implement software training programs tailored to individual roles of users, so they get adapted to the new system quickly.
- Continuously evaluate the progress of technology adoption, capture user feedback about problems that are identified, and respond to it in a timely manner.
- Maintain your healthcare software with regular system re-visits, scheduled software maintenance, patches and updates, and system upgrades to ensure optimal performance round-the-clock.
How Can Fingent Help?
Fingent is a top custom software development company offering healthcare information technology consulting, application development, implementation, maintenance, and support services for different players and industry segments in the healthcare ecosystem.
We help identify your medical practice’s specific needs and come up with the best custom software solutions for improving patient care delivery and enhancing the productivity and performance of healthcare professionals. We also develop technology solutions for healthcare payer organizations and insurance carriers that help them make better decisions and improve their visibility in today’s competitive market.
Our healthcare technology consulting team aims to deliver value through personalized healthcare application platforms and customized health information technology solutions designed to fulfill your business objectives. Contact us to understand how your business can benefit from our healthcare IT consulting services.
Frequently Asked Questions About Health Information Technology
Electronic Health Records are digital records of patient health information that can be used by physicians for clinical decision-making. EHRs can be shared with other medical departments, care providers, or labs as they are updated with real-time patient data.
Personal health records also contain the same type of information as EHRs like diagnoses, test reports, patient charts, and medical history. However, PHRs are designed to be configured, accessed, and managed by patients to maintain their personal healthcare information in a private, secure, and confidential environment.
Electronic prescribing tools are used by medical practitioners to create and share prescriptions with their patients online or send the prescriptions directly to the pharmacy in just a few clicks. This saves the time and effort for both the patient as well as the pharmacist and eliminates the risks like loss or misplacement of prescriptions.
A patient portal is an online healthcare application that allows patients to interact and communicate with their healthcare providers, such as physicians and hospitals. Patient portals provide patients with convenient, 24-hour access to their personal health information from anywhere with an internet-connected device like a laptop, smartphone, tablet, PC or a connected gadget.
Electronic Health Information Exchange (EHIE) refers to the mobilization of healthcare data digitally across different healthcare information systems used by care-giving organizations, communities, and hospital networks. HIE facilitates continuity of care with multiple providers by moving real-time patient information across the systems involved in the exchange process.
Telehealth or telemedicine involves the delivery of remote clinical services over the telecommunications infrastructure. Examples of telehealth include virtual diagnosis and monitoring, connecting with the healthcare provider through video call or live chat, online therapy and counseling, patient-doctor communication through patient portals, mobile health devices, and wearables.
Custom healthcare software development simplifies and improves day-to-day healthcare management for care providers, hospitals, medical professionals, vendors, patients, and all other players in the healthcare ecosystem. Developing software tailored to your healthcare organization’s needs will help you:
- >> gain end-to-end visibility over your routine clinical activities,
- >> integrate disparate applications used for different purposes,
- >> generate custom reports,
- >> get up-to-date medical data across all your devices and applications,
- >> reduce total cost of ownership,
- >> ensure health information safety,
- >> track medical history of patients,
- >> optimize revenue, and gain financial stability.
Healthcare information technology allows you to create electronic health records that provide in-depth, real-time data for physicians to make critical decisions concerning their patients’ safety. Healthcare technology applications produce a lot of data every second, which is highly insightful in patient care management.
Analytics can improve medication safety and ensure better treatment reconciliation. Custom software has created a higher degree of transparency in the healthcare ecosystem. By utilizing the valuable health data, it is now possible to combat diseases and offer better healthcare outcomes in general.
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