Introduction
An article by Thomas W. Feeley, Zachary Landman, and Michael E. Porter, “The Agenda for the Next Generation of Health Information Technology,” provides an overview of developments in health information technology. The development of information technology in medicine significantly improves the healthcare system, making medicine accessible to the population and effectively providing medical services.
This is possible due to changes in the organizational issues of the system, which improve the quality of medical services while reducing the financial costs of providing them. At the same time, IT in medicine contributes to improving the work of all components of the healthcare industry. It makes it possible to simplify patient records, organize and reduce specialists’ working time, control drug prescriptions, and simplify the entry and receipt of statistical data.
Discussion
The article describes the world’s experience in the development and application of information technology. It demonstrates the unlimited potential of this industry to solve society’s social problems. The main problems faced by medical organizations are uncoordinated requirements, lagging or ill-conceived regulatory frameworks, and the mismatch between information systems and their needs. The medical IT market develops unevenly in different countries. Different national and local regions have IT projects with markedly different levels of complexity and scope. Medicine is one of the most progressive industries in terms of IT implementation. The medical practice involves servicing many patients, performing complex diagnostic tests, and processing a significant volume of information. Therefore, it is difficult to provide quality medical care without computer systems.
The widespread use of IT in medicine during diagnosis and treatment and intensive integration into the global information space are important tasks in reforming global medicine. IT companies need to stay abreast of government initiatives in healthcare information. The article points out that the latest medical developments and requirements for electronic health records must be considered, as well as attention to the fast-growing markets of developing regions. Only in this way will these companies remain competitive in the market. About 16 years ago, in 2006, a new patient value approach was developed by Michael Porter and Elizabeth Theisbergue (Feeley et al., 2020).
It was this event that propelled the topic forward. They defined value as the ratio of health outcomes per dollar spent to achieve them (Feeley et al., 2020). After all, first and foremost, the development of information technology in healthcare is aimed at patient convenience.
For a very long time, IT and Internet-based tools have been created and used to optimize the production processes and interactions of medical organizations and their teams. The main component of the IT system in medicine is the patient’s medical record (Feeley et al., 2020).
Hospital employees no longer have to deal with paperwork. Medical records are no longer lost and are available at any time. In just a few years, the phenomenon called “digitalization” and the revolutionary leap in Internet accessibility has brought previously inaccessible telemedicine technologies into the average citizen’s life. On the one hand, medical organizations and even individual doctors began to create Websites where patients could easily obtain information about the scope of specialists, methods, treatment results, study descriptions, indications, and contraindications for specific methods and learn contact information. Doctors have become more accessible and understandable to ordinary citizens thanks to innovations.
Conclusion
Based on the article, it can be concluded that complex systems that can provide significant economic benefits and generally improve the delivery of medical services to the population are the fastest to develop. E-medicine takes advantage of the many capabilities of information technology and promotes the development of a holistic intellectual environment. Thus, the use of information technologies in medicine makes it possible to ensure the management of medical care for the population everywhere, to introduce the latest methods of diagnosis and treatment into the activities of doctors and nurses, and to organize consultations with doctors remotely.
Reference
Feeley, T. W., Landman, Z., & Porter, M. E. (2020). The agenda for the next generation of health care information technology. NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery, 1(3). Web.
