Health information technology
[3] The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) kicked off the FDASIA workgroup of the HITPC to provide stakeholder input into a report on a risk-based regulatory framework that promotes safety and innovation and reduces regulatory duplication, consistent with section 618 of FDASIA.
HIMSS Good Informatics Practices-GIP is aligned with FDA risk-based regulatory framework for health information technology.
[6] Moreover, software's traceability features allow the hospitals to collect detailed information about the preparations dispensed, creating a database of every treatment that can be used for research purposes.
However, a strict definition is elusive; "technology" can refer to material objects of use to humanity, such as machines, hardware or utensils, but can also encompass broader themes, including systems, methods of organization, and techniques.
For HIT, technology represents computers and communications attributes that can be networked to build systems for moving health information.
Informatics underlies the academic investigation and practitioner application of computing and communications technology to healthcare, health education, and biomedical research.
It deals with the resources, devices, and methods required for optimizing the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information in health and biomedicine.
Health informatics tools include not only computers but also clinical guidelines, formal medical terminologies, and information and communication systems.
[10] The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed into law in 2009 under the Obama administration, has provided approximately $19 billion in incentives for hospitals to shift from paper to electronic medical records.
Given that healthcare providers have not reached the deadline (2015) for adopting electronic health records, it is unclear what effects this policy will have long term.
In 2014 there was widespread interest in a new HL7 draft standard, Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), which is designed to be open, extensible, and easier to implement, benefiting from modern web technologies.
[13] In a 2008 study about the adoption of technology in the United States, Furukawa, and colleagues classified applications for prescribing to include electronic medical records (EMR), clinical decision support (CDS), and computerized physician order entry (CPOE).
[15] However, there is consensus that EMRs can reduce several types of errors, including those related to prescription drugs, to preventive care, and to tests and procedures.
The Thorn et al. article, elicited that emergency physicians noticed that health information exchange disrupted workflow and was less desirable to use, even though the main goal of EHR is improving coordination of care.
[21] The same finding was seen in an earlier article with the focus on CPOE and physician resistance to its use, Bhattacherjee et al.[22] One opportunity for EHRs is to utilize natural language processing for searches.
Despite ample evidence of the potential to reduce medication errors, competing systems of barcoding and electronic prescribing have slowed adoption of this technology by doctors and hospitals in the United States, due to concern with interoperability and compliance with future national standards.
[24] And, aside from regulatory concerns, for the small-practice physician, utilizing CPOE requires a major change in practice work flow and an additional investment of time.
[25][33][34] Collectively, these reported adverse events describe phenomena related to the disruption of the complex adaptive system resulting from poorly implemented or inadequately planned technological innovation.
The sources for these errors include: Healthcare information technology can also result in iatrogenesis if design and engineering are substandard, as illustrated in a 14-part detailed analysis done at the University of Sydney.
