IT in Healthcare

Questions: You are to research a real life business example of your choice and the impact of IT on that business. Important points 1) Does business need IT? 2) Why IT is important for business survival? 3) What is required to apply IT into business? (Cost, planning, designing, equipment, installation, training, etc) 4) How does business use IT? (internally such as staff, employees, and externally such as customers, suppliers) 5) What benefits and advantages does IT bring to business? (Revenue, flexibility, reduces cost, etc.) 6) What type of risk does IT bring to business? (security, privacy, confidentiality) 7) How can business maintain and monitor IT? Your report will be assessed on the quality of your research and report presentation. Discussion must be relevant to your chosen business. Your report is to be in the style of a business report. There is a limit of ten pages excluding appendices. Answer: Introduction: IT capabilities in the healthcare sector are more than a necessity now with its application in the healthcare industry is of utmost importance in reducing costs, better infrastructure, monitoring of data and keeping patient records. The risks of using IT resources apply and therefore extra security measures are adopted. Therefore, proper selection of network service is required which can serve the essential features in a medical environment while providing tools for administration. 1. Requirement of IT in healthcare: With advancements in the healthcare sector, IT capabilities are required to improve the services, quality, efficiency and knowledge of the latest medicines. IT can re-engineer the health care system for advancements in educational, cultural, social, financial and technological aspects. Generating solutions to healthcare problems remotely, documenting expenses and resource evaluation for the adoption of IT and adopting IT solution in other healthcare sectors (Kellermann and Jones 2013). IT has already helped for American body AHRQ agency in emergency preparedness of hospitals and other healthcare systems to curb bioterrorism and public health events (Ortiz and Clancy 2003). 2. Importance of IT for Business Survival Implementation of IT services is important for any medical business to survive to maintain high customer satisfaction and faster medical operation. Research is ongoing as to implement IT for improvement in clinical decision-making, expenses, information and communication management and accessibility to healthcare. 3. Requirements of Application for IT in Business Costs: Implementation of RFID requires US$9 to 25 million for the purchase of software, hardware, staffs and consulting services. Hence, for a project to be successful, cost estimation is needed after understanding the scale of the project before implementation. Planning: Scheduling of time is necessary for the implementation of any project successfully. It helps in chalking up a structured and a detailed plan in steps and assist in securing and efficient utilization of resources, monitoring and controlling of the project. Development and Design: For development, design, maintenance of IT systems in healthcare sector HIT or Health Information Technology is developed. It is an automated information system able to reduce costs and human error, increase efficiency while providing better healthcare service to the consumers. Installation: Unusual problems arise during installation and hence, the business that depends on this new product is identified and segregated early on. The system will need access to the online network and therefore installed skilfully so that no significant troubleshooting is required later on and complement creation of new framework policies in future. Training: Training is essential before implementation of any IT products to avoid mishaps, failure, and future troubleshooting can be kept to a minimum. At AHRQ, staffs and employees are trained on the operations of using RFID and HPMS. 4. Use of IT in AHRQ 4.1 Internal Use Staff: Existing staffs are trained on technical operations in training sessions the instructor will host. It is the duty of the instructor to create an environment where the staffs feel free to voice their opinions and difficulties because they may not be proficient in using electronic devices and therefore they will need assistance. Employees: Existing medical employees are taught the operations of RFID and how can it bring effective solutions in healthcare. Instructional manuals are provided for detailed and step-by-step information and how different modules work. Besides, on the job training is encouraged for efficient use of the system. 4.2 External Use Customers: Patient's medical records are shared with the patient and with his/her relatives at a later point in time when required, preventing loss of documents or searching through heaps of physical papers. The service is instantaneous and can be shared online. Suppliers: Suppliers track usage of clinical drugs and get a report of medicines, which are in demand; therefore, supplies made accordingly. It prevents over-storage and negligence of products. 5. Advantages of using IT in AHRQ Revenue Generation: By implementing IT services in health care, AHRQ became a $1.7 billion organization accounting for more than 10,000 employees, the inclusion of 1500 advanced practitioners and physicians. Flexibility: It enables archival of long-term monitoring data, detailed analysis for the planning of costs and network structure, efficient use of virtual environments and hardware, and in-depth analysis of data for pinpointing networking problems. This monitoring tool is constantly looking for the switches and servers at all times, requiring lesser human intervention (Miriovsky, Shulman and Abernethy 2012). For storage of medical images of patients to help healthcare professionals, PACS and VNAs have been developed. A hospital has to plan for the integration of PACS with other internal health IT systems if it wants to implement PACS in radiology department (Deokule et al. 2016). Reduce Cost: Installation of PRTG; a network monitor helped in reducing costs by the purchase of required hardware, detection of issues beforehand and response signs leading to avoidance of emergencies and fewer downtimes. Customer Satisfaction: After implementation of HPMS in AHRQ, the satisfaction of involved employees taken into account, along with their productivity level, and overall improvement in the safety of patients. Similar improvement of performance observed after installation of RFID, which resulted in increased interactivity between doctors and patients, cost reduction and overall management of drugs. 6. Risk of using IT in AHRQ Security: As stated by Magrabi et al. (2013), the organization has developed health device mobility, upgraded the IT related programs and added another stage to EHR for better compliance and security. Privacy Risk: Privacy is of concern for the patients and customers since health websites frequently disclose data of patients and accounts for the second highest data breach. To prevent threats to health safety and information, HIPAA has proposed new regulations at federal and state levels. Confidentiality: Patient records are private and confidential, and it is the responsibility of the organization to protect it at all costs. Leaking to the public can bring drastic consequences 7. Aspects of Maintaining and Monitoring IT in Business To maintain IT, the organization has to implement PRTG Network Monitor. As stated by Aminian and Naji (2013), PRTG Network Monitor, a product developed by Paessler, is a modern network monitoring system and covers all healthcare related services. It has got high scalability which can scale well to any size of networks, from small offices to large fortune companies (refer Appendix 1). Its functions are to capture and analyze the bandwidth, utilize network at its maximum capacity, thereby, allowing other organizations to monitor optimization issues in the network, throttling, and high usage so that bandwidth can be adequately optimized for server workloads (Paessler.com 2016). As per Besson, Von Czettriz and Bax (2014), monitoring, the healthcare framework modern network technologies implemented in new hospitals, laboratories, medical device producers and healthcare agencies in the form of Tracking Assets, Monitoring of patients, Messaging and Communication, and digital medical records of patients. Conclusion IT services are not limited today and has lent its usability to medical and healthcare services and created newer job profiles, which requires both IT and healthcare skills into one. It has its advantages in the form of electronic data storing of patients and sharing, monitoring of services but it also poses risks in the shape of data breaching if propers steps are not taken. PTRG Network Monitor is the best choice for this program providing fair pricing, inclusive of all features used worldwide. References: Aminian, M. and Naji, H.R., 2013. A hospital healthcare monitoring system using wireless sensor networks.J. Health Med. Inform,4, p.121. Besson, M., Von Czettriz, G. and Bax, R., Body Science Llc, 2014.Wireless medical diagnosis and monitoring equipment. U.S. Patent 8,771,184. Deokule, K., Modi, P., Mistry, D., Patki, H., Patel, A. and Abuzaghleh, O., 2016. Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis. Kellermann, A.L. and Jones, S.S., 2013. What it will take to achieve the as-yet-unfulfilled promises of health information technology.Health Affairs,32(1), pp.63-68. Magrabi, F., Aarts, J., Nohr, C., Baker, M., Harrison, S., Pelayo, S., Talmon, J., Sittig, D.F. and Coiera, E., 2013. A comparative review of patient safety initiatives for national health information technology.International journal of medical informatics,82(5), pp.e139-e148. Miriovsky, B.J., Shulman, L.N. and Abernethy, A.P., 2012. Importance of health information technology, electronic health records, and continuously aggregating data to comparative effectiveness research and learning health care.Journal of Clinical Oncology,30(34), pp.4243-4248