Health Information Technologies & Clinical Decision Support Tools
In the evolving society, an extensive range of health information systems and clinical decision support (CDS) systems provide clinical guidelines for patients, nurses, doctors, and administrative staff to aid efficient clinical decision making, improve patient care and maintain patient privacy. Health Information Technologies and clinical decision support tools involve secure health information management involving the steps of processing, storage, and exchange of efficient health information across software/ computerized systems for decision making, quality medical care, and clinical communication.
The clinical decision support tools and other health care technologies provide effective health care, efficient administrative process, increase accuracy in medical prescriptions/ procedures, decrease paperwork and time consuming, and reduce health care costs for the medical treatments. Furthermore, clinical decision support tools enhance real-time communication among health care professionals and with the patients. It is also known to be affordable, easily accessible, and controls health care costs. The health information technologies and Clinical Decision Support tools provide follow-up for the patients after their discharge (message alerts for their appointments and medication) and engage the patient’s family in providing self-medical care, medication, nutrition, etc. Nursing informatics projects articulated health care information, which the nurses can use to choose medical interventions to provide efficient medical care for patients. The computerized data management system aid the nurses, patients, and administrative staff to provide documentation, diagnostics, consultancy, protocols, and follow-ups (e.g. Computer alert message system) for the patients.
Clinical Decision support systems (CDS) improve medical guidelines with the help of warnings, real-time communication, alerts, and clinical advice. In the nursing practice, CDS proves to be a significant and cost-saving system (McGonigle 2015). RAND Health Corporation conducted a study on the US health care system and stated that “the US healthcare system could save $81 billion annually, improve quality of medical care and reduce healthcare events, if the health information technology is implemented broadly” (Hillestad et al., 2005).
References
Hillestad, R., Bigelow, J. H., Fonkych, K., Bower, A. G., Fung, C., Wang, J., Taylor, R., Girosi, F., Meili, R., & Scoville, R. (2005). Health Information Technology: Can HIT Lower Costs and Improve Quality? RAND Corporation. https://doi.org/10.7249/RB9136
Jacob, V., Thota, A. B., Chattopadhyay, S. K., Njie, G. J., Proia, K. K., Hopkins, D. P., … & Clymer, J. M. (2017). Cost and economic benefit of clinical decision support systems for cardiovascular disease prevention: a community guide systematic review. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 24(3), 669-676.
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (Eds.). (2015). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
