Question

In your own words discus the following: In what ways can information technology support public health activities? Health care organizational goals? Provide examples for each. What are some benefical outlooks? What are some cons?

Answer 1

Information technology has been used to support wide range of public health activities.For example information technology includes electronic blood pressure gauzes, digital thermometers, laboratory equipments, word processing software, data stored and shared via emails, text, webpages to communicate between different health agencies and individual. The health care organization, hospital and other medical care providers are using internet to provide health information to the public and to advertise their services.

The public health activities include early identification of factors that contribute of health issues and creating awareness about the emerging issues and data trends.For identification of cases, the information technology like laboratory equipments, electronic blood pressure gauze, digital thermometer can be used. This will help to detect the risk group and will help to adopt measures to prevent the occurence of diseases in the community. The use of information technology like internet, televisions, educational advertisements help to create awareness among the public regarding the developing health issues, and available health care facilities.

In a health care organization, the use of information technology in day to day activities is common. The goals of every health care organization is to provide a good quality care to its clients. Information technology whether in the form of internet software to store data or use of various electronic equipment to ease the effort and save time plays a significant role. The modern trend in use of electronic health information system i.e electronic health records is an appropriate example to explain the importance of information technology in attaining health organizational goals.

The use of information technology involves both pros and cons. The benefits includes:

• Coordination of care: The use of information technology helps to coordinate the services provided by the various departments of health care organiaztion. Not only at organizational level, it also coordinate the services among community and health care agencies.
• Access to information : The data pertaining to health issues and the data of ones personal health record have become accessible with the use of information technology.
• Communication: The IT provides a platform for communicating the various health issues of the public to the healthcare organizations by which adequate measures can be implemented on time to resolve these health issues.
• Reduce the cost: Use of information technology have reduced the cost of services delivered. The public can avail good quality care that is cost effective.
• Reduces workload: Use of IT have reduced the workload on the health personnels as it saves the time and effort.

The cons of this technology:

• In some cases the technology may lack features expected to have which may result in breakdown of many projects.
• The security and privacy regarding the use of IT remains a issue in every organization.
• The use of IT can make people hesistant to work or put their efforts for success of a project. It can make people dependent on information technology rather than using their own potentials to work.