Implementing ICT in Health Services: Benefits and Challenges

The case study provides a scenario of a pregnant woman's experience with miscommunication, confidentiality issues, and poor maternal care at a polyclinic. The implementation of ICT in health services is discussed, including its benefits such as improving efficiency, providing electronic referrals, and storing patient records. However, challenges such as high costs, changing system structure, and potential inaccuracies are also highlighted. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of using ICT efficiently to minimize disadvantages.

Running head: INFORMATION FLOWS ACROSS HEALTH
Information Flows Across Health
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note:

1INFORMATION FLOWS ACROSS HEALTH
Introduction:
The case study provides a scenario of the various problems that a pregnant woman has to
go through such as the miscommunication, confidentiality at workplace and poor maternal care
by the polyclinic services.
Issues of the case study:
There are a number of issues that are present in the case study. The significant problem
that are related to the case study is regarding the system of the hospital. The hospital is not
developed enough to provide solutions for the welfare of a person who needs help, in this case
the pregnant woman. The case study brings out the issue of the lack of communication about the
services and the time of service available at the hospital. For this reason, the woman had to take
the pain of waiting at the hospital laboratory. The polyclinic itself could have collected the
samples of the blood and sent it to the hospital laboratory. The other issue that may be stated is
that the boss of the organization the woman is working in is not at all co- operative and as a
result of which the woman has to keep the information hidden. Data collection and lack of proper
handling of the record has also been highlighted in the case study.
Implementation of ICT:
Being a Health Service Manager, the responsibility has to be taken that the service is
provided in the best way in order to satisfy the customers and attract more customers and expand
the business to a broader extent (Talebian, Mohammadi & Rezvanfar, 2014). The use of
Information and Communication technology (ICT) can be made in order to make the work of the
polyclinic more fast and efficient. The use of ICT can be made in the various sectors. In the
world of automation the use of ICT could have been made to provide electronic referrals. The

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use of ICT can be extended for providing helpline support to the patients and answer the query of
the questions of the patients (Vaishnavi & Kuechler, 2015). The time of the services of the
polyclinic can also be communicated to the patient. The health record of all the patients can be
stored online so that the record can be accessed whenever required and can be viewed if the
doctor wants to know what issues were faced by the patient when the patient previously visited
the doctor.
Benefits of the Implementation of ICT:
There are a large number of benefits that are involved in the use and implementation of
ICT. The organization will not only profit but also the user who is benefitting from the
organization. The various information about the services of the polyclinic can be conveyed by
the process of ICT (Laronde et al., 2017). This will help the customer in knowing which service
is available and at what time the services are available. Moreover, the other information that are
involved such as the time of the collection of the report, time of appointment with the doctor can
also be conveyed to the customer by the help of ICT technology. The electronic record stores the
information in a very efficient manner and all the record can be viewed for later use. The ICT
also provides better scope for risk management of the organization. The ICT technology also
looks forward to provide better quality improvement.
Disadvantages of ICT:
There are a large number of advantages that the use of Information and Communication
Technology. However, at the same time there are a number of disadvantages of using the ICT
technology. There is high cost of implementation of ICT in an organization. The other
disadvantage of the implementation of the ICT technology is that the organization has to change

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the structure of the system and the organization of the technology (Galliers & Leidner,(Eds.)
2014). The other issue that may occur is that if by the help of ICT any information is referred
then that information may not be accurate as the information of the various organization does not
stay updated at all times.
Conclusion:
From the report it can be concluded that the use of the Information and Communication
technology can be made in order to carry out the various tasks in an efficient manner and in a
faster way. The use of ICT can be made to give special facilities to the people who are in
emergency. There are a number of benefits that are involved with the use of ICT. There are some
disadvantages as well. Therefore, the use of ICT should be made in an efficient manner such that
the disadvantages are done away with.

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References:
Galliers, R. D., & Leidner, D. E. (Eds.). (2014). Strategic information management: challenges
and strategies in managing information systems. Routledge.
Laronde, G., MacLeod, K., Frost, L., & Waller, K. (2017). A Case Study Of The Integration Of
Information And Communication Technology In A Northern Ontario First Nation
Community High School: Challenges And Benefits. Journal of International Education
Research, 13(1), 27.
Talebian, S., Mohammadi, H. M., & Rezvanfar, A. (2014). Information and communication
technology (ICT) in higher education: advantages, disadvantages, conveniences and
limitations of applying e-learning to agricultural students in Iran. Procedia-Social and
Behavioral Sciences, 152, 300-305.
Vaishnavi, V. K., & Kuechler, W. (2015). Design science research methods and patterns:
innovating information and communication technology. Crc Press.