Introduction
Healthcare refers to the general “diagnosis, treatment, and the prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments” that affect human population (Shortliffe and Cimino p.24). It involves practices and policies that enable combating of both the major and minor ailments that commonly affect individuals’ health. Human health in itself defines the state of a person being physically, mentally, and spiritually upright.
Biomedical informatics is a “scientific field that deals with the storage, retrieval and optimal use of information and data” for the entire problem solving and decision-making (Shortliffe and Cimino p.24). It describes how information is represented and analyzed in biological systems; it focuses on the management of information related to the underlying basic biological sciences. Such technology has emerged due to the rapid advances in computing technology that incorporates computer machines that have resulted into the automation of a variety of manual processes such as using filing cabinets to store voluminous files and documents, which actually involves more paperwork and is much tedious. The introduction and adoption of the new technology of using computers to process, store, retrieve, and disseminate all the information of the health care organization has led to efficiency, reliability, and cost effective delivery of services in the medical field. Majority of the errors that were made have drastically reduced. Biomedical informatics includes the efficient and consistent use of computers and their subsequent applications, which range from low-level processing machines, to processing of extremely high-level descriptions depending on the overall purpose of the computers.
The extent of assimilation of computer applications into the healthcare has been greatly attributed to a variety of factors including the new developments in technology that have provided powerful and inexpensive computer hardware and software. The result of this is making them easily available to hospitals, departments, and even to individual physicians, gradual increase in number of health professionals who have been trained in both clinical and biomedical informatics, and the ongoing general changes in healthcare designed to control the growth rate of medical expenditures (Shortliffe and Cimino p.24).
Electronic records management system
Electronic records management system (ERMS) describes a system that accepts input data, stores, manipulates, and disseminates information to other medical departments within the entire hospital unit. An electronic record includes information that is recorded on any electronic medium (magnetic medium) that is intended to provide documentation for long-term retention. Such systems are developed to enable efficient management of all the information concerning the patient’s ailments, treatment, and occurrence trends of diseases and ailments to determine future trends and the required preventive and curative measures. The systems maintain the content, context, structure and the links between records to enable their ease of accessibility.
General purpose
The general purpose of the electronic records management system is to provide data storage, retrieval, manipulation, and dissemination for clear interpretation. Such systems are computerized in order to enable efficient processing, storage and manipulation of data, which is a very vital and valued resource of any organization. Such systems have automated manual methods of data storage, which are unreliable in these modern times. The system ensures efficiency by making information readily available when needed for decision-making and operational activities, accountability through creation of complete and authoritative record of activities, compliance, allowing profitable use of financial resources, and risk mitigation. For such systems, data backups are easily carried out to ensure recovery in case of data loss, through theft, or computer defaults such as hard disk failures and so on.
Data types
The electronic records system is an automated computer system that accepts a variety of data types, which would include input text formats (both alphanumerical characters, ASCII, and extended ASCII characters), graphics including bitmap, JPEG, from scanners, electrocardiograms from magnetic imaging systems, metadata (information that enables creation, registration, classification, access, preservation, and disposition of records) among others.
Input and Output
Input includes all the data from various departments within the healthcare organization including employee descriptions and patient’s particulars. Such data is usually stored in databases of various departments. The input data includes specific information about patients (their description, and particular ailments), and possible treatment given to the patients. This data is processed to produce final reports of the entire procedures taken to the patients, which is stored in the records. Output data includes overall reports, medical summaries, medical digital images, and graphs, vouchers, medical charts an so on.
System use
The electronic records management system (ERMS) is used to capture, classify, and identify records to ensure the validity of the content and structural context. The ERMS captures data from databases, websites, imaging systems (X-rays and MRIs), desktop applications, and other business applications from other departments. The system maintains all the organization’s records through provision of controls and security of information stored, and long term preservation. Security is ensured through maintenance of access control, which ensures only authorized access to records and hence security of the organization’s information. The system enables efficient accessibility to the required records by the medical practitioners, hospital administration, and the entire organization for comparison and both short and long-term decision-making.
The system processes, stores, and disseminates information according to the needs of the organization. It generates, analyses and prints final reports of any medical, financial, and administration undertaking within the organization, and organizes all the input and output data that is used by the organization.
Importance of the system
The ERMS ensures that all the data, and information within a health care organization is valid, and easily accessible by authorized persons, and that the safety of the stored information is guaranteed. The system is important because it enables efficient and cost effective information archival when need arises. The organized and stored information is easily available to be used in data mining, and provides a tool for decision-making.
The system is important in providing a hierarchical organization of data and information for easy retrieval and access. It increases the productivity of the entire health care organization by putting it at a competitive advantage due to the easy access of updated and valid information.
The system guarantees availability, authenticity, and usability, and provides faster processing of vast information at short tome intervals within the organization resulting into the overall profitability and quality of service provided to the patients, which in turn results in customer satisfaction.
The format in which information is stored using such systems enables numerous information to be stored within a small location, usually on the hard drives of the computer machines, which require less space in terms of premises, hence the cost of storage of vital information is greatly reduced. ERMS enables secure backup of data to be made constantly and within a short time, and it uses affordable and durable hardware components, which guarantee longer storage periods with less chances of data loss. It reduces costly paper accumulation with systematic record disposal and increased daily performance of transaction processing, storage and retrieval. The systems ensure the protection of corporate interests as well as the rights of employees, clients (patients), and other stakeholders, enabling the organization to function in a financially and ethically accountable manner.
Health organizations deal with a variety of individuals with different health issues, such systems ensure that all the information describing the symptoms and the treatment given to the patients is effectively and efficiently stored for future reference and provision of statistics describing certain trends of certain diseases that occur during certain periods, and this helps in preparation for prevention measures. Use of such systems ensures that Service delivery is consistent and equitable, and document policies, decisions, and outcomes. Incorporation of email systems ensures real-time communication and instant response between different parties within the organization more effectively, at the same time ensuring security through encryption (Sampson p.136). Due to online access, the system can be used for research purposes with the internet being a valuable source of research materials.
The use of the internet search engines enables easy access to most biological databases within less time intervals. This has enabled vast quantities of information to be accessed and retrieved easily for comparison and use for solving various problems that may arise, such as, confirmation of new symptoms of certain ailments and the remedy to put into practice. For example, clinicians may learn disease causative agents such as gene complications from accessing online databases containing quality information describing such effects, and the prescribed medication that corrects the sequence of genes involved with certain diseases, and enroll in chat groups, and online forums that are helpful in knowledge integration. Such systems ensure information security because only the authorized users will have access privileges to any part of information. The use of simulation programs (both static and dynamic) enables immediate response from expert medical professionals from over the world and the enhanced computer-based learning process (Sweden p.3).
Conclusion
Healthcare describes the general procedures involved in diagnosing, treatment, and prevention of infections, and physical injuries to the body of an individual. An individual’s health is vital to ensure the productivity and effectiveness of the individual’s efforts for any profitability to be realized. Electronic management systems are computer application systems that are used in biomedical informatics to process, store and manage all the organization’s information, which is a crucial resource. Such systems have been incorporated within the medical field to ensure increased productivity of the services and the overall customer satisfaction.
Efficient electronic records management systems ensure that the organization runs smoothly by allowing a variety of information to be stored, retrieved, and manipulated easily as the records involve details of numerous individuals from varied locations. It has enhanced the availability of decision support tools through the availability of hierarchical and well-organized information.
Works Cited
Sampson, Karen. Value-added records management: protecting corporate assets, reducing business risks. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group. 2002. Web.
Shortliffe, Edward and Cimino, James. Biomedical informatics: computer applications in healthcare and biomedicine. New York: Springer. 2006. Web.
Sweden, Eric. Electronic Records Management and Digital Preservation: Protecting the Knowledge Assets of the State Government Enterprise. Lexington. 2007. Web.