Question

Discuss both the value and challenges of implementing standard vocabularies and terminologies in the storage and use of health care data. How do these challenges impact informatics professionals and the work they do in health care settings?

Answer 1

Data standards are the principal informatics part essential for ithe nformation flow through the national health information infrastructure. With common standards, clinical and patient safety systems can share an integrated information infrastructure.Common data standards also help to the effective assimilation of new knowledge into decision support tools, such as an alert of a new drug contraindication, and refinements to the care process.

There are many challenges to implement the standard terminology and vocabulary in the storage and use of healthcare data.

Health care professionals need to have knowledge regarding the standard terminologies and codes in order to provide quality services.

Historical patient data may be encoded with non standardized or proprietary vocabulary, then coding this data using standard vocabularies might result in problems .

Lack of interoperability is an another obstacle .

Lack of comprehensive standard codes .A standard vocabulary may not provide all the terminologies that corresponds to the entire set of data in current use .

Local extension codes are the codes added at a healthcare facility to encode data when appropriate ,equivalent code is not yet found in the standard vocabulary .This may not be added to the standard vocabulary. Which may result in difficulties.

Removal of codes or vocabularies or revision of standardized terminologies may cause difficulties.If patient data is stored using these terminologies, it will no longer be interpretable .

If the code from an external standard vocabulary is used to encode data ,then if the meaning of terminology or codes are changed over time, the data may interpreted incorrectly.