Theory of Health Informatics

This article discusses the theory of healthcare informatics and its impact on patient care and work lives of healthcare professionals. It also covers the types of data tracked by EHRs, ethical concerns, and the importance of proper training for healthcare providers.

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Theory of Health Informatics
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Introduction to the Theory in Health Informatics
The absence of focus by the healthcare providers on the patients and too much
concentration on the computer screen could be as a result of inadequate training of the officers.
A study has indicated that most of the healthcare providers in the healthcare facilities do not have
the knowledge of certain computer basic skills (Shin, 2017). Thus they cannot properly
understand the electronic health records. The nature of the computer charting is another issue
which causes too much attention of the healthcare officers on the computer screens instead of the
patients. It has been argued that some of the computer chartings are seriously complicated thus
difficult to comprehend by the health officers (Coiera, 2015). The computer charting may
sometime require knowledge of an expert in the specific area, and this is one of the key issues
that make the healthcare officers shift to focus on to computer screen.
The electronic health records generally result in improved patient care and the work lives
of the family physicians. The medical knowledge over the past few years has increased thus
making available more treatment options; patients, therefore, can live longer than expected as
well as deal with a variety of chronic conditions. To understand the various needs of different
patients, there is the need for more sources of information and a good relationship which is only
available in the electronic health records (Tierney et al., 2015). Additionally, there is a need for a
variety of tools which allows for access to information. Based on that it can, therefore, be
concluded that the implementation of the EHRs does not result in the suffering of the patients,
but it instead enhances the quality of life of various patients in healthcare facilities.
Clicking boxes in the charting of an EHR typically do not provide adequate details on
events, condition, and the patients. Such an argument is based on the fact that the clicking boxes
causes click fatigue among the healthcare professionals. The quality of documentation of

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information relating to the patient's decreases due to the increased number of dialog boxes which
is used for recording of information. The click fatigue caused by the clicking boxes in an EHR is
associated with alert fatigue which is exhibited by the bombardment of the clinicians with certain
non-vital reminders. Such alert fatigue increases patient safety hazards.It is important that during
the design of the EHR software, it is assessed carefully because they can reduce the compliance
of the physicians with the standards of care. Moreover, there will be adequate information
documented in the EHR when such clicking boxes are removed (DeVore, 2015).
EHRs contains vital information about different patients which are considered critical for
tracking the progress of such patients. However, the types of information are numerous. The
three types of data tracked by the organizations using EHRs include, processed, structured and
unstructured data (Subbiah, 2018).
Unstructured data type: Is an information that either does not have a pre-defined data
model or is not organized in a pre-defined manner (Wolfinbarger, 2015). Unstructured data is
typically text-heavy but may contain data such as dates, numbers and facts producing consults,
emails and multimedia resources.
Unstructured data tool can glean actionable information that can help an organization
succeed in a competitive environment. Also, it helps in retrieving potential history, to reduce
cases of readmission of data and for the massive misinterpretation of data, the article warns the
user before execution
The organization tasked with the tracking of data is the Identification System Group
(ISG). It is a nationwide collective of experts whose primary role is to offer a variety of solutions

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that meet the various data management and tracking needs. It uses various tools such as
identification credentials (cards, badges, labels, and metals tags), asset management software,
scanners for barcodes, magnetic strips, and contact or contactless cards or some other methods
(Grembergen, 2018). ISG can provide solutions or individual components whichever is needed
for an organization.
There are various ethical concerns, for instance, the organizations using the health care
system having ethical responsibilities to assist through quality assurance activities. Furthermore,
they use the epidemiological research in a large population database, The Identification System
Group programme, since they benefit from such activities. However, involvement in quality
assurance usually involves using subscribers’ data without their approval (Lavrenko, 2017).
Occasionally, the loss of autonomy and potential risk of disclosing information that might harm
an organizations should expect quality assurance activities to be ethically sound; healthcare
resources should be committed to providing quality assurance.
The topic discussed this week is an introduction to healthcare informatics which applies
information technology to assess and organize health records to enhance healthcare services. It
deals with techniques, devices and resources to use acquisition storage and retrieval of data in
medicine and health. My project is to determine how the healthcare informatics can be used to
improve the data system of patients and various organizations (Marten, 2016). To find out the
classification of data and their storage techniques. In this class, this project will help learners to
understand various types of data, how to use technology to improvise the health records and
system operation. Doctors should not much of their focus on the computers when treating
patients but instead, develop systems that does the operation accurately keeping data accurately
hence the doctors will enough time to examine and attend to their patients maximally. I think the

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topic important to me since it has helped me to acquire knowledge on the moral and ethical
issues of the unstructured data and other various types of data. And that I have a responsibility to
come up with advanced systems that will make it easier for doctors to perform their tasks. In
most cases, we should ensure we use raw information to processed information (Reason, 2016).
Healthcare informatics theory states, it is easier to read information on the computer
screen than on papers. Also, many patients complain that most doctors tend to concentrate on
computer screens rather than the patients. This is caused by lack of proper training of doctors on
the usage of the machines, poor computer system design that is complicated and requires highly
trained experts than the doctors using them and the nature of the computer charting which were
in most cases analog thus slowed charting rate. More improvised machines are required to help
the doctors to manage the system operation.
Conclusion
Healthcare informatics has helped the medicine department to improve their health
services to their patients since there is a proper storage facilities and more advanced equipment
that doctors can use to examine efficiently and effectively the patients situation and research
problems. More advanced machines should me technologically put in place and doctors should
be taught on how to operate the through multitasking on patient’s treatment and machine
operation. In this way, accurate task execution and the file storage will be enhanced. The
healthcare organizations worldwide should embrace the technological advancement to improve
patients live and simplify research operations.
References

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Coiera, E. (2015). Guide to health informatics. CRC press.
DeVore, A. (2015). The Electronic Health Record for the Physician's Office for SimChart for the
Medical Office-E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Hair Jr, J. F., Wolfinbarger, M., Money, A. H., Samouel, P., & Page, M. J. (2015). Essentials of
business research methods. Routledge.
Lavrenko, V., & Croft, W. B. (2017, August). Relevance-based language models. In ACM
SIGIR Forum (Vol. 51, pp. 260-267). ACM.
Marten, T., Krämer, D., Mager, B., Schell, P., Bürsner, S., & Paech, B. (2016, March). Do
information retrieval algorithms for automated traceability perform effectively on issue
tracking system data?. In International Working Conference on Requirements
Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (pp. 45-62). Springer, Cham.
Reason, J. (2016). Managing the risks of organizational accidents. Routledge.
Shin, D. H., Lee, S., & Hwang, Y. (2017). How do credibility and utility play in the user
experience of health informatics services?. Computers in Human Behavior, 67, 292-302.
Subbiah, N. K. (2018). Improving Usability and Adoption of Tablet-based Electronic Health
Record (EHR) Applications (Doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University).
Tierney, W. M., Alpert, S. A., Byrket, A., Caine, K., Leventhal, J. C., Meslin, E. M., &
Schwartz, P. H. (2015). Provider responses to patients controlling access to their
electronic health records: a prospective cohort study in primary care. Journal of general
internal medicine, 30(1), 31-37.
Van Grembergen, W., & De Haes, S. (2018). Introduction to the Minitrack on IT Governance
and its Mechanisms.