HC1041 IT in Healthcare: Analysis of IT's Role in Healthcare, T2 2019

This report delves into the utilization of Information Technology (IT) within the healthcare sector. It begins with an introduction highlighting the transformative impact of IT on modern healthcare, emphasizing improved treatment procedures, enhanced patient safety, and increased healthcare delivery quality. The report then discusses the needs and importance of IT in healthcare, including the shift from manual to digital processes and the increasing complexity of medical knowledge. It outlines the processes of applying and using IT, covering aspects like cost, planning, design, equipment, installation, and training. The advantages of IT are explored from both medical professionals' and patients' perspectives, including financial benefits, quicker lab results, and easier access to health information. Risks associated with IT, such as physical damage, sensitive information theft, data loss, and system disruption, are also addressed. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of monitoring and maintaining IT systems in healthcare to maximize benefits and mitigate potential risks. References are provided to support the findings.

Running head: IT IN HEALTHCARE
IT in healthcare
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction..........................................................................................................................2
2.0 Discussion............................................................................................................................2
2.1 Needs of IT in healthcare.................................................................................................2
2.2 Importance of IT in healthcare.........................................................................................3
2.3 Process of applying IT in healthcare................................................................................3
2.4 Process of using IT in healthcare.....................................................................................5
2.5 Advantages of IT in healthcare........................................................................................6
2.6 Risks of IT in healthcare..................................................................................................7
2.7 Monitoring of IT in healthcare.........................................................................................7
3.0 Conclusion............................................................................................................................8
References..................................................................................................................................9

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1.0 Introduction
This paper focuses on how information technology utilizes in healthcare. In today’s
world, with the growth of internet, a new technology is developed that is information
technology. While attaching the information technology with the healthcare industry, the
improvement will happen. With the help of information technology, better treatment
procedures can be achieved that includes the increment if patient safety as well as healthcare
delivery quality by decreasing such medical errors (Abdelhak., Grostick and Hanken, M.A
2014). The interactions within the services providers of healthcare industry and the patients
has stronger than the previous cases. This following reflects on the importance of IT in
healthcare and how the information technology utilizes in this industry. Also, the risk factors
of IT technology are discussed in this paper.
2.0 Discussion
2.1 Needs of IT in healthcare
In the previous years, all the procedures of healthcare industry was done manually. It
is impossible for the human as well as physician to keep all information related to the patients
to their memory (Adibi 2015). With the growth of medical knowledge, the amount of
information has increased and for that it is not possible to memorize the information for the
medical staffs. As a result, most of the times, the one information was overlapped with other
and for that, there can happen such medical errors regarding patient’s health condition (Agha
2014). With the rapid changing in medical knowledge, the doctors cannot understand about
the meaning of the changes. In that, the information technology requires to guide the doctors
for taking the right step of medical changes for a critical condition patient. For these kind of
reasons, the information technology is necessary for the healthcare industry.

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2.2 Importance of IT in healthcare
The information technology improves the healthcare industry than the previous
stages. The main aim of the information technology is to provide the better the treatment to
the patients so that the health equity (Bates et al. 2014). Attaching information technology
with the healthcare industry, helps to record all the patient related information for the better
improvement of healthcare delivery. This IT technology allows to the healthcare practitioners
as well as various governmental health agencies for healthcare related information analysis
which helps to establish different healthcare policies for better treatment as well as
prevention of spread diseases (Hossain and Muhammad 2016). This technology provides
better quality clinical improvements for the healthcare industry which includes to deliver the
accurate information of the patients and also the exact treatment process to the doctors for
various category patients. The information technology introduces the electronic health record
which helps to provide the better healthcare to the patients, increases the patient’s safety as
well as effectiveness.
2.3 Process of applying IT in healthcare
The information technology helps to the healthcare industry to increase its quality.
The implementation of information technology in the healthcare industry depends on a
unique technique. The process includes few steps such as cost, planning, designing,
equipment, installation as well as training etc.
To implement the information technology in the healthcare industry, the cost should
estimate at the initial time because the implementation of information technology is
expensive (Mettler 2016). But it helps to decrease time as well as efforts to increase the
efficiency of the healthcare industry. The planning process is necessary to implement the
information technology because it considers what processes requires to support and what kind
of hardware and software needs to set up for the information technology.

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Figure: The overall process of implementing IT in healthcare
(Source: created by Author)
The designing process is the next step after completing the planning process. There
are a number of hardware as well as software required for implementing the information
technology. So, designing process is necessary for installing these software and hardware so
that it can be handled by the staffs as well as doctors and nurses of the healthcare industry
(Nguyen, Bellucci and Nguyen 2014). To install the IT technology, there are lot of equipment
such as electronic healthcare which provides the better quality treatment as well as storing of
all information related to this industry. These software needs to install for getting the
improvement of the healthcare industry. Not only the installation process but also, to provide
the proper training of these kinds of software to all the medical staffs so that they can easily
handle these software for providing patient safety.
Process of
implementation of
IT in healthcare
Planning
Designing
Installation
Training
Cost
Equipment

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2.4 Process of using IT in healthcare
The healthcare industry attaching with the information technology provides the better
treatment quality to the patients (Patil and Seshadri 2014). With the help of this technology, it
is not difficult for the employees to handle all the procedures related to the healthcare
industry. This technology helps the healthcare industry through two sides including internal
as well as external. In the internal case, the staffs, doctors as well as the nurses handle all the
information related to the patients for providing them to the better treatment as well as
prevention of spread diseases. With the help of this technology, it is also easy for the doctors
to detect the exact diseases of the patients and for prevention provides the accurate treatment
so that the critical conditioned patients recover quickly. This information technology
introduces various innovative medical treatment which is used for the medical education.
This technology is beneficial for the medical students also.
On the other hand, if it considers at the external side, the patients checks his health
related information with the help of information technology. Moreover, this technology
introduces a software which includes various databases that helps to store various medical
equipment as well as various medicine information. Also, the healthcare industry places order
regarding the medicine to the suppliers through this kind of software or information
technology.
Figure: Utilization of information technology in healthcare

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2.5 Advantages of IT in healthcare
There are a lots of advantages of healthcare industry which coming the information
technology into this industry (Senft, Gallegos and Davis 2016). The following advantages
takes place according to two type of perceptions including the health professionals and
patients.
According to the perception of medical professionals, the advantages are as follows:
 Financial benefits – At the previous days, a lot of finance wastes because of
inefficient processes. But with the growth of information technology, it increases the
efficiency of the healthcare industry so that it reduces the financial cost.
 Quicker laboratory results – With the help of electronic health record, the process
of getting various test results from the laboratory is easy for the lab clinicians and
therefore it involves quicker lab results.
 Time savings – By using this technology, according to the reports of various medical
professionals that it saves the time as well as efforts (Wager, Lee and Glaser 2017).
According to the patient’s perception, the following advantages are given as below:
 Easy to access – With the help of this information technology, the patients can
directly accessed their health related information and records so that they can
directly attached with the healthcare industry.
 Provide extra preferences – At the previous days, for calculating blood pressure
and insulin levels, it is needed to record all information in the paper log and it is
difficult to handle for the patients (Weinstein et al. 2014). But electronic logs are
easy to access for recording information regarding these diseases.

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2.6 Risks of IT in healthcare
The information technology not only provides a number of advantages to the
healthcare industry but also there will occur various risks due to this technology. The
following risks are given as follows:
 Physical damage – Physical damage considers as n damage regarding with the
physical devices such as servers, laptops as well as various network devices
(Krupinski 2014). This risks occur due to less maintenance or inappropriate storage
environment. This kind of risk results a great loss of healthcare information.
 Sensitive information theft – The sensitive information of the healthcare industry is
protected through copyright as well as trademark etc. The loss of the sensitive
information occurs decrement of business growth, loss of valuable data as well as loss
of competitive track with other organizations.
 Data loss – The data loss may be loss deliberately or by human mistakes. Due to this
risk, attacking, fraud or blackmail will occur and in the case of patient’s information,
there may occur to provide the delay treatments to the patients and for that there may
loss of customer loyalty for the healthcare industry.
 System disruption – The system disruption is another risks of IT in the healthcare
industry. It may occur due to hacking or other malicious methods as well as natural
disaster. It is the great loss for the healthcare industry because it includes the
disruption of electronic health record which is the core factor of the healthcare
industry.
2.7 Monitoring of IT in healthcare
Though the information technology provides a lot of advantages to the healthcare
industry and for that it is the responsibility for the healthcare industry to take care about this
technology (Yuehong et al. 2016). Various physical devices such as printers, laptops, servers

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as well as network devices that are related to the information technology are needed to
maintain properly to avoid damages. Another concern should be taken by the healthcare
industry is to protect the sensitive information which includes industry related information
and also patient’s information to avoid such malicious techniques such as hacking or other
natural disaster.
3.0 Conclusion
It is stated that the healthcare industry is provided a lot of improvements by the
information technology. It enhances the better quality of healthcare treatment provided to the
patients. Moreover, it improves according to the technical part of the healthcare industry that
means it improves the systems better. All the procedures can operate through the internet
system. Through various steps, the information technology is implemented in the healthcare
industry and it is beneficial for both the healthcare industry as well as the patients. But some
of the processes are followed properly to maintain the information technology in the medical
industry. Otherwise, the disruption of systems may create a great loss for this hospital
industry.

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References
Abdelhak, M., Grostick, S. and Hanken, M.A., 2014. Health information-e-book:
Management of a strategic resource. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Adibi, S. ed., 2015. Mobile health: a technology road map (Vol. 5). Springer.
Agha, L., 2014. The effects of health information technology on the costs and quality of
medical care. Journal of health economics, 34, pp.19-30.
Bates, D.W., Saria, S., Ohno-Machado, L., Shah, A. and Escobar, G., 2014. Big data in health
care: using analytics to identify and manage high-risk and high-cost patients. Health Affairs,
33(7), pp.1123-1131.
Hossain, M.S. and Muhammad, G., 2016. Cloud-assisted industrial internet of things (iiot)–
enabled framework for health monitoring. Computer Networks, 101, pp.192-202.
Mettler, M., 2016, September. Blockchain technology in healthcare: The revolution starts
here. In 2016 IEEE 18th International Conference on e-Health Networking, Applications and
Services (Healthcom) (pp. 1-3). IEEE.
Nguyen, L., Bellucci, E. and Nguyen, L.T., 2014. Electronic health records implementation:
an evaluation of information system impact and contingency factors. International journal of
medical informatics, 83(11), pp.779-796.
Patil, H.K. and Seshadri, R., 2014, June. Big data security and privacy issues in healthcare. In
2014 IEEE international congress on big data (pp. 762-765). IEEE.
Senft, S., Gallegos, F. and Davis, A., 2016. Information technology control and audit.
Auerbach publications.

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Wager, K.A., Lee, F.W. and Glaser, J.P., 2017. Health care information systems: a practical
approach for health care management. John Wiley & Sons.
Weinstein, R.S., Lopez, A.M., Joseph, B.A., Erps, K.A., Holcomb, M., Barker, G.P. and
Krupinski, E.A., 2014. Telemedicine, telehealth, and mobile health applications that work:
opportunities and barriers. The American journal of medicine, 127(3), pp.183-187.
Yuehong, Y.I.N., Zeng, Y., Chen, X. and Fan, Y., 2016. The internet of things in healthcare:
An overview. Journal of Industrial Information Integration, 1, pp.3-13.