The purpose of this paper is to evaluate an article that deals with Healthcare Informatics, and to discuss how information that is required in a healthcare setting is affected by the current state of IT. In the article ôPatient Safety Tools Upö, by Terry Monahan (March 2002), the author asserts that a large number of deaths occur each year due to medical error. These are usually caused by failures in the healthcare delivery system in patient safety measures. Applications such as electronic medical records (EMRs), decision support systems, computerized physician order entry via hand-held computers, point-of-care clinical documentations systems (such as a bar coding system for medication distribution) all contribute to reduce the chances of medication errors that are directly linked to patient deaths. Additional benefits of a well-developed healthcare informatics system include improved resource utilization and reduced lab testing and imaging. These safety standards ôcould save almost 60,000 lives and prevent more than 500,000 serious medication errors annuallyö (p. 31).
Obviously, standards and procedures need to be developed. Mr. Monahan points out the necessity of developing a software infrastructure that will ôcreate, distribute and apply electronic clinical guidelinesö (p. 32). One specific recommendation that is self-evident is the need to eliminate handwritten clinical data. One tool that may dispense with this area of medical errors is the development of an infrastructure that is independent of software and hardware, secure, guaranteeing patient privacy and safety, very much in the way that the current credit card industry works.
Many hospitals are currently developing their clinical documentation systems to reduce nursing time/costs by installing a bar code system that is reviewed and entered into a computer by the hospital pharmacy. This cuts down significantly on medication
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