Question

Search the internet for various types of health information systems (ie.e., management, administrative, knowledge management, executive, clinical). Compare and contrast their similarities and differences and how each one might be used by a healthcare manager.

Answer 1

Health information system (HIS) is a system that captures, stores transmit and manages health data or activities. These systems are used to collect, process, use and report health information. The information from a HIS can be used to drive policy and decision making, research and ultimately health outcomes. The healthcare information system is the future of healthcare centres. Despite that, sceptical about adopting this new technology. This is because of the two reasons which is the high cost and implementation process.

Types of Health Information Systems:

It can be broadly classified that encompasses several specific.

1. Strategic or Operational systems:

This is typically used for information classification.provisons are made for information systems based on the type of information they are handling. A pyramid classification system allows organizations to access the spread of digitalization. The ability to evaluate dependencies can help to identify system deficiencies, as well.

2. Clinical and Administrative systems for managing patient information on the administrative level:

Clinical systems are dependent on administrative data. The foundation of an integrated HIS is a master index developed around the most basic patient information with links to different clinical systems and the clinical system contains the electronic patient record, diagnostic data, outcomes and processing.

3. Electronic health record and patient health record:

This aims to enable semantic interoperability for health information systems between various electronic health record systems in a non-proprietary format to prevent vendor lock-in. knowledge concepts are stored outside the electronic health record as archetypes, which supports the recording of clinical information.

4. Subject and task-based systems:

These are related to patients or healthcare professionals in any type of healthcare organization. On the other hand, task-based systems are associated with particular tasks. Subject-based systems are often preferred as they reduce data duplication. In task-based systems, the same subjects could be related to various tasks with basic information such as patients’ ID being duplicated across each task. In a subject-based system, the basic information is entered only once and flows with the subject through various tasks.

5. Decision support systems:

This system converts data to clinically relevant information and presents it in the actionable form to clinicians, adding in adherence to regulatory guidelines and best practices. These systems can give results for several data manipulations to mimic cognitive processing. Decision support systems can also facilitate the next steps in the workflow, such as submitting a prescription to the pharmacy and scheduling a follow-up appointment for the patient.

6. Financial and clinical health information systems:

This system provides easy access to patient financial information, such as costs and payors. They also help in monitoring patient usage of different departments or services. Financial systems typically including invoicing capabilities as well as tools for following up on non-payment.