Nursing Essay: How Health Informatics Influence Nursing & Health Care?

Question

Task: Task instructions:
1. Write a formal academic nursing essaythat presents how health informatics can be used to influence nursing and health care.
2. Within your essay you need to present two examples of health informatics research that have changed nursing or health care and critically appraise the strengths and weaknesses of that research.

Answer

Introduction:
The nursing essaywill objectify health informatics as its primary consideration. By offering a sound conceptual knowledge about health informatics, it will further try to justify the process of influence on nursing and health care by health informatics. In order to make the concern more effective, clear, and transparent, it will discuss two definite health informatics (of telehealth health informatics and electronic medical records health informatics) with strengths and weaknesses in the healthcare setup. By the discussion of telehealth health informatics and electronic medical records health informatics, it can better evaluate the transformation of health care or nursing by Healthcare Informatics.

Health informatics:
Healthcare informatics can even be referred to as biomedical informatics in the context of Engineering and Science, as it applies the informatics field for medicine. The health domain is associated with a wide-spanned area with several types of problems that can only be detected by exercising computational techniques. Medical informatics can be referred to as the intersection of healthcare, computer science, and information science(Saheb & Saheb, 2019). The field is associated with methods, devices, and resources which are the requirement for optimizing storage, acquisition, and use of information in biomedicine and health. Health Informatics is a relatively new and interdisciplinary field for the Healthcare industry which uses information technology for analyzing and organizing health records for improving healthcare outcomes.It can even be referred to as health information systems.

Importance of Health informatics in nursing and health care: Change is the most inevitable part of every industry and the nursing profession in the health sector is not an exception in this regard. With increased different types of health issues, simplification or strategies that helps in overcoming the challenge even is rapidly changing for maintaining the alignment with the complication in the Healthcare aspect. In nursing,informatics issued for addressing the challenge of every day, which significantly influences the way nurses’ function for patient care(UIC Online, 2017). One of the most important considerations in the aspect of informatics is that, it shares immense influence over nursing practice through documentation. Modernization becomes much more important for the health sector specifically after the covid-19 pandemic. Hence handwritten notes, paper charts, cannot really serve the purpose. Rather nurses have updated themselves to take notes in the electronic health record and several other systems to maintain the medical history of the patient in an easily accessible and up-to-date manner.

As per the reporting of Healthcare Informatics and Management Systems Society, the change immensely influences the entire sector and eventually improving the daily workflow.Storing the information electronically is much easier as well as easily accessible and available for everyone - in the care team involving care providers, as well as physicians and other staff members of the Healthcare organization or the patient party (Fernandez-Luque et al., 2020). With mobility in the sector, it is much more important to maintain medical records effectively, where the health Informatics with its documentation process in an electronic way offer the sector an acceleration. Health informatics is even important for care coordination in nursing. The ability to monitor communication, workflow and staffing can be much helpful for the nurses to recognize the areas which need improvement. It immediately helps to ensure better staffing level, maintaining adequacy for all departments by removing any sort of complexity in the process, so that it canoffer the best care to the patient.

Besides, as the health sector remains from emergency services,thereby real time treatment and considerationis needed and if avoided, the patients willsuffer. In such concern, maintaining adequacy for the organization, irrespective of the department is much more important and crucial where health informatics by maintaining the record offersimmense help to be well informed with updated information (Kinnunen et al., 2019). Further, in nursing, evidence-based practice is the essential part. At present determination of the best practices are being done by health informatics by analyzing a mass quantity of data through the collection of patient care. Health Informatics is assisting to understand present situations and conditions in a better way to reciprocate the future more effectively. Analyzing data by the health informatics are being more accurate to draw the conclusion, which eventually helps to provide the best possible information to determine if the service is effective enough for future to address the patient in the best possible way with safe secure and quality service. The advancement of health informatics is even offering scopes for new job titles which somehow can be effective enough to deal with unemployment in a better way (Mantas &Hasman, 2017).

Tele-health health informatics:
With modernization and digitalization,digital services like interactive online portals, live chat, remote patient monitoring,and telehealth have become a revolution in the healthcare system to confirm better effective involvement of health informatics. Tele-health health Informatics is efficient for everyone similarly for care providers, patients, and administrators,even for an insurance company. In an emergency, the patient can gently ask questions to the doctors by sending messages online, instead of waiting for an appointment. The technology is initiating access for the patient through valuable healthcare information taking care of the cost reduction as well by 11%,tripling return on investment for investors, whichreduces burden on healthcare stakeholders specifically for patient (Chaet et al., 2017). In order to confirm its advantageous aspects, the first and foremost concern would be easy accessibility and availability for the patient without wasting time.The further consideration can be lower cost with insurance coverage and finally its nature of not putting any pressure over the health care providers. 64% telehealth health informatics offers remote patient monitoring, which is a vital service for healthcare providers to monitor the condition of the patient remotely in real-time without being physically connected with each other.Thus, it becomes a blessing for the patient(Lyons, Watson&Massacci, 2019). On the other hand, doctors even can assist more patients by effective consultation through telehealth health informatics offering a comprehensive virtual solution for patients as per consumer data.

There are some negative aspects are associated as well with telehealth health informatics as the consultation can only be possible, if that is not associated with any sort of test like blood test,USG, etc or it is already done and stored. Without being tests done proper diagnosis cannot be possible for the practitioner (Ford et al., 2020).Health consultation for regular patients can be possible by telehealth health informatics, however, for a new patient it is not effective. Security concern is even an issue in this regard.The emergency service sector deals with sensitive data and storing those electronically can initiate data breach issue anytime, which not only affect the reputation of the organization, practitioner, and other stakeholders rather can be vibrant for patients in several aspects.

Electronic medical records health informatics:
Electronic medical records health informatics can initiate the ability to diagnose diseases to prevent and reduce medical errors initiating patient outcome. 94% of health sector stakeholders have reported that electronic health records can offer better accessibility and availability for the medical records during the requirement, which confirms clinical benefit in the practice (Rexhepi et al.,2018). Electronic medical records health informatics is a system that gets maintained by the healthcare system for collecting and storing medical information for patientsand administrators to use as per the requirement of a medical practitioner.

It is used for clinical care, as well as healthcare administration for capturing the variety of medical information through individual progression within stipulated time to manage the clinical workforce. Electronic medical records health informatics by sharing information with the practitioners at any time, provide help in diagnosing which eventually reduces medical errors.It makes the entire sector more effective and efficient to serve the purpose of the emergency service sector (Kruse et al., 2017). It improves the interaction between provider and patient with effective communication by better accessibility and availability. It can even improve population and public health outcomes by efficiently analyzing the collected data to share it with multiple healthcare organizations for research purposes to have better prevention activities.

However, it needs to be remembered that the entire process depends on technology and there can be some errors that can lead to any fatality. In such consideration, the worst scenario can arrive through outdated data (Mattar et al. 2017). Electronic medical records health informatics cannot be effective,if the data is not updated constantly. Further, it is time-consuming and costly processing which can have inefficiency and inconsistency in its structure.

Conclusion:
The discussion has confirmed that health informatics is a blessing for the healthcare stakeholders at present as it makes the entire concern easily accessible, available,and cheap through updated technology. It improves healthcare outcomes by advantages features that confirm betterment in the entire sector. By citing the example of telehealth health informatics and electronic medical record health informatics, it has clarified the advantageousaspects for health informatics in the health sector. However, the discussion has even confirmed that the health Informatics have some disadvantages in its structure which need to be kept in mind, however effective handling of those can offer the best outcome for the entire sector with enhanced patient outcome.

References:
Chaet, D., Clearfield, R., Sabin, J. E., & Skimming, K. (2017). Ethical practice in telehealth and telemedicine. Journal of general internal medicine, 32(10), 1136-1140.Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-017-4082-2

Fernandez-Luque, L., Kushniruk, A.W., Georgiou, A., Basu, A., Petersen, C., Ronquillo, C., Paton, C., Nøhr, C., Kuziemsky, C.E., Alhuwail, D. & Skiba, D., (2020). Evidence-based health informatics as the foundation for the COVID-19 response: a joint call for action. Methods of information in medicine, 59(06), pp.183-192.Retrieved from: https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/html/10.1055/s-0041-1726414

Ford, D., Harvey, J.B., McElligott, J., King, K., Simpson, K.N., Valenta, S., Warr, E.H., Walsh, T., Debenham, E., Teasdale, C. &Meystre, S., 2020. Leveraging health system telehealth and informatics infrastructure to create a continuum of services for COVID-19 screening, testing, and treatment.Nursing essay Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 27(12), pp.1871-1877.Retrieved from: https://academic.oup.com/jamia/article/27/12/1871/5865271?login=true

Kinnunen, U.M., Heponiemi, T., Rajalahti, E., Ahonen, O., Korhonen, T. &Hyppönen, H., (2019). factors related to health informatics competencies for nurses—results of a national electronic health record survey. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 37(8), pp.420-429. Retrieved from: https://journals.lww.com/cinjournal/Abstract/2019/08000/Factors_ Related_to_Health_Informatics_Competencies.6.aspx Kruse, C. S., Smith, B., Vanderlinden, H., &Nealand, A. (2017). Security techniques for the electronic health records. Journal of medical systems, 41(8), 1-9.Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10916-017-0778-4

Lyons, J.P., Watson, K. &Massacci, A., (2019). The evolution of elderly telehealth and health informatics. In Recent Advances in Digital System Diagnosis and Management of Healthcare. IntechOpen. Retrieved from: https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=QpYtEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&dq=telehealth+Health+Informatics+in+Nursing &ots=ypXbfNMYBC&sig=TpmTWYK_j81wOEjiXYVzn5lUqp0&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q= telehealth%20Health%20Informatics%20in%20Nursing&f=false

Mantas, J. &Hasman, A., (2017). IMIA educational recommendations and nursing informatics. Stud Health Technol Inform, 232(1), pp.20-30. Retrieved from: https://books.google.co.in/bookshl=en&lr=&id=sUTiDgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA20&dq=Health+ Informatics+in+Nursing&ots=CN11-IKb_M&sig= BEX9xsYJRgHrQdUCY0YF8zc40FM&redir_esc=y#v= onepage&q=Health%20Informatics%20in%20Nursing&f=false

Mattar, A., Carlston, D., Sariol, G., Yu, T., Almustafa, A., Melton, G.B. & Ahmed, A., (2017). The prevalence of obesity documentation in primary care electronic medical records. Applied clinical informatics, 26(01), pp.67-79. Retrieved from: https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/html/10.4338/ACI-2016-07-RA-0115

Rexhepi, H., Åhlfeldt, R.M., Cajander, Å. &Huvila, I., (2018). Cancer patients’ attitudes and experiences of online access to their electronic medical records: A qualitative study. Health informatics journal, 24(2), pp.115-124. Retrieved from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1460458216658778

Saheb, T. & Saheb, M., (2019). Analyzing and visualizing knowledge structures of health informatics from 1974 to 2018: a bibliometric and social network analysis. Healthcare informatics research, 25(2), pp.61-72. Retrieved from: https://synapse.koreamed.org/articles/1122144

UIC Online (2017). Informatics in Nursing: Impact and Importance Retrieved from: https://healthinformatics.uic.edu/blog/the-impact-of-health-informatics-on-nursing-practice/