Healthcare Informatics In The Healthcare Industry

818 Words4 Pages

Healthcare informatics is an important aspect of healthcare that is often forgotten about. Health informatics combines the field of medicine and information technology. The most important purpose of health informatics is to deliver the most effective health care to patients. In previous years, the health industry relied on a paper-based system to organize, store, interpret, and integrate patient records and medical information. However, the informatics industry is booming and allowing for new electronic technology and information systems, and clinicians can now find this data stored in convenient coded computer systems as well as cloud-based storage systems. The company I have chosen is RadNet. RadNet is a national leader in providing high-quality, …show more content…

Early electronic healthcare record software began to be adopted within certain departments. Registration done electronically meant that patients were able to benefit from a more efficient check-in process. Another successful technological development in healthcare management was when the master patient index was introduced. This was a database of patient information that could be used across all the departments of a healthcare organization. Medicare and Medicaid were the main influence driving healthcare and the resulting health information technology (HIT) advancement in the 1960s. Initially, computers and storage were large and expensive and hospitals typically shared a mainframe. The basic applications developing were shared hospital accounting systems. One of the main healthcare drivers in the 1970s was the need to do a better job communicating between departments and the need for discrete departmental systems. Computers were now small enough to be installed in a single department without environmental controls. As a result, departmental systems proliferated. Unfortunately, these transactional systems, embedded in individual departments, were typically islands unto themselves. In the 1980's healthcare drivers were heavily tied to diagnosis related groups and reimbursement. hospitals needed information from both clinical and financial systems in order to be reimbursed. At this time, personal computers, software applications, and networking solutions entered the market and as a result of this, hospitals began integrating financial and clinical system applications. In the 1990's, competition and consolidation drove healthcare, along with the need to integrate hospitals, providers, and managed care. In the 2000's technology is well advanced and clinical applications available to healthcare providers to make real-time clinical decisions. What is driving