HSYP817: Public Health Informatics
The electronic health record system is an effective information system which will maintain all required information related to health diseases of Australian children. In other words, the electronic health record is healthcare information system which needs to be implemented by the Australian health department in order to maintain the record complete and timely. The use of the electronic information system will support in collecting and analyzing accurate information related to diabetes cases of children (Butler-Henderson et al., 2019). Through this system, diabetes cases among children in Australia will be kept in record for determining the ration as well as to keep timely surveillance on updating the children records.
The development of electronic healthcare information system will support the epidemiologists in identifying the cases of children having diabetes as well as also improve the maintenance of healthcare records for better patient care. With the implementation of new system in existing healthcare department of Australia would improve the ability to diagnose the diabetes of the children in better manner and also to prevent from the medical error efficiently. In addition, Ravì et al. (2017) added that there is some resources required for proper implementation of electronic healthcare information such as financial resource to operate a system process, manpower like technical and IT professional and electronic resources (computer and laptop).
The new Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) is a flexible system which includes some specific attributes of the system like timeliness and usability. With the implementation of the system, doctors will face difficulty for usability of system for accessing the information of patient which is available at same point of time. For proper use of the information, there is need to provide a training to doctors for making them easy to operate the new system efficiently (Ozair et al., 2015). On the other hand, the implementation of the system include timeliness attribute which creates negative influence on the healthcare outcome as access to patient information takes more time than previous manual reporting of the patient detail.
For adoption of new information system, is beneficial for achieving the better healthcare outcome and for creating secured and safe reliability. The main aim of this information system is to gather or collect the accurate incidence records for Australian diabetes children. In simple words, the development of new information system will also include the required information that is collected by the team of epidemiologist along with the support of some specific information collected directly or indirectly from the patient (Salerno et al., 2017). However, this information system is beneficial for the healthcare department to maintain the record properly in order to avoid the medical error.
Further, the data that will be required include family history of the children, child age & gender, types of billing codes, research time, HbA1c and blood glucose test results, patient problem, hospital discharge information and medications, etc. These stated data would be useful in during the treatment of the children as old record would support the doctor in understanding the children previous history properly. This all required data at one place would be only available with the implementation of new healthcare information system as this would reduce the time to gather previous treatment history and would also provide with the complete information.
The data collected would be analyzed and reported in different information records system such as infant record segment, children record segment and adult record segment and old record segment so that research gets conducted on the basis of required category of data. The data would be reported from different numbers of hospital records, MyHealth Records and Pharmacy records, etc. The medical data of the Australian people and children would be analyzed and reported electronically so that it becomes easier for hospital management to maintain timely and complete data and epidemiologists to keep timely surveillance on increase or decrease in number of patients who are having different diseases.
The role of public health informaticians is to conduct a proper surveillance related to the details of public health which is collected, analyzed and interpreted for determining the numbers of diseases and also for preventing from any future injuries or diseases. The information required should be related to the health and medical information of the population of the Australia so that huge amount of the data is gathered in order to identify the ratios of the children facing from the disease of diabetes (Nelson and Staggers, 2016). In context to it, the information that public health informaticians will need to develop the algorithm and programming is gathered information which is fair, flexible, creative and somewhere complex in nature as well as dataset of each patient and also risk factor.
The informatics of public health will use gathered information in order to develop a set of rules for preventing from the diseases. At the same time, it is very necessary that collected data should be fair and timely collected so that patient details are made available at point of time. In healthcare system, timely update of information regarding patient is necessary for categorizing the set of data collected from the population of the Australia. In this, flexible information is required which get change with the patient health outcome i.e., on the basis of their change in age, previous status of disease, low or high blood pressure, etc.
Further, dataset of patient will be developed by public health informatics in order to form a set of process through which data will be analyzed and examine for problem solving. The information related to numbers of diseases will support the public health informatics in developing a programming of information system accordingly because different people or children have different diseases which need to be cure by different treatment process (Mandel et al., 2016). For public health informatics, it is complex situation to divide the population into different segments on the basis of age, sex and generation so that it becomes easier to diagnose the patient on time.
Before proper implementation of Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) for that it is very important to analysis and test the each stage of the system process in order to avoid the failure in the future which affects the data or information related to patient. The new information system would be implemented and maintained by using proper process or approach which supports the sets of computer engineers in designing new software which automatically filter out the data of children having diabetes diseases (Andreu-Perez et al., 2015). In this, proper project team is formed with the appropriate skills that develop a new information system and conduct a timely meeting for each stage.
In concern to this, there is five stages such as assessment, planning, selection, implementation and evaluation and improvement that need to be followed for the implementation of a new information system i.e., Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR). The first stage of EHR is assessment which helps to prepare the set of practice for the implementation of the system efficiently. In this assessment, proper survey is conducted for determining the need and demand for IT experts and also analysis process is also carried out for identifying the requirement for the hardware. Through this data, practice data is collected for moving further to the planning stage. Further, planning is second stage of implementation of EHR in which practice data is reviewed in order to define the EHR goals and also improvement opportunities related to system are identified (Xu et al., 2017). This stage will support the project team in developing a proper plan for maintenance and implementation of system. After planning, selection is other stage of EHR software under which configuration, selection process and details of the goals are selected as per the requirement of the system. During the implementation and evaluation stage of the Electronic Healthcare Record, the system is installed and for analyzing and testing the efficiency of developed system for identifying issues and also ensures staffs provided with the timely training so that they can efficiently operate and manage the system. At last, improvement is a stage in which EHR is modified for resolving the issues faced during the evaluation process so that improve healthcare system is maintained.
In addition, there are some other areas which also need to be focused while implementation of the system such as IT experts, public health professionals, technical & well-skilled staff, etc. The IT expert need to focus on timely review of the new system that would be operated in order to check that a set process is followed and working properly in order to avoid any error during identifying the patient details. Moreover, the team of epidemiologists would also help in reviewing that detail which is added or registered in the information system is inaccurate or incomplete. Furthermore, technical & well-skilled staffs are required for following and analyzing that new information system is updating the patient details timely or not, data is getting register or not and also doctor are accessing the system efficiently or not and so on.
When any new proposed information system is developed, there are some strengths and weaknesses involved with the system. In concern to it, the research of Ahmadi et al. (2015) clearly mentioned that the adoption of electronic healthcare record system allows the providers (doctors) to reliable access to the readily available data of patient in order to diagnose the patient health problem accordingly and on time.
In regards to this, the strengths of new electronic healthcare system include:
- Improvement in healthcare system supports in better patient care as well as enhances the security and privacy of the patient data. This system provides advantage to healthcare sector to quickly access to the patient records for doing efficient care and for maintaining proper coordination.
- Keeping electronic records of patient provides advantage in making an effective clinical decision by adding all required information of patient from different multiple sources (Casey et al., 2016).
- Increases efficiencies of healthcare system by providing accurate, up-to-date and full information regarding the patients at the point of care so that preventive medicines are promoted and coordination get improved timely.
- With the adoption of information system, the reduction in cost becomes strength for healthcare as it encourages the better health by promoting healthier lifestyle among population (Shin et al., 2017). In this situation, the people and children lifestyle need to be changed or improved by encouraging them to involve in physical activity, have nutritional food, use preventive care and avoid behavioral risk.
- The other strength of using the proposed information system is that new healthcare software system improves the risk management process in which timely clinical alerts and reminders are made, support in therapeutic decision making, and provide safeguards to patient from prescribed treatment which has adverse events, etc.
- The use of electronic healthcare record somewhere found to be beneficial for improving and generating better healthcare outcomes by overcoming the patient problems successfully.
Weaknesses related to development of proposed electronic health record information system are as follows:
- Major weakness can be chances of potential security and privacy issues of the patient personal data or information. This weakness becomes disadvantage for the providers as data of patient get hack because of which treatment of patient get affected adversely.
- The other weakness is inaccuracy of the information because of direct nature of healthcare record for which they must need to update all detail of patient visit immediately (Alex et al., 2016). But if details are not updated then chances of failure get increases means other healthcare providers will simply rely on inaccurate and incomplete data when following an appropriate treatment protocols.
- Malpractice liability concern is considered as weakness or potential issues which are associated with the implementation of Electronic healthcare records system. In this situation, doctors need to access the medical data through system of Electronic healthcare record (EHR) because they hold responsibility if they avoid to access all data of patient (Leite et al., 2016).
- Coding errors and lack of knowledge are two identified weaknesses which creates a huge negative influence on the implementation and usage of new software system.
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