Health Informatics: Evolution of the Field
According to Sweeney (2017), the discipline of healthcare informatics unites technology, healthcare science, computer and information systems, and even knowledge of human psychology to optimize healthcare. There has also been a many decades-long struggle to encourage more providers to adopt electronic health and medical records to ensure greater uniformity and accuracy of data across providers. Unfortunately, many providers are concerned that the investment of training, new equipment, and other measures are too costly to justify a full shift to electronic medical files, although the ubiquity of computers makes holding out more and more difficult. Providers are now employing experts in the specialty of informatics to better understand how to use its power for good, and to increase healthcare providers comfort levels in using informatics on a daily basis.
When first implemented, one of the concerns of passing the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA) was that it might inhibit medical research using public databases, due to privacy restrictions, that: HIPA implementation strategies increase workloadand increase the dropout rate for proposed studies when investigators are unable or unwilling to meet the regulatory requirements (OHerrin, Fost, & Kudsk, 2004). However, informatics has evolved considerably since then, with more and more researchers citing their support for the use of electronic records (appropriately protected with privacy legislation). Informatics has the potential of offering security and value to patients, while simultaneously offering researchers the use of large databases of information that can be analyzed in full, versus small representative samplings as was common before electronic recordkeeping systems became common.
Of course, informatics is still an evolving field, and more education of providers in its use is still necessary. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me (1 Corinthians 13: 11). Increasingly, the childish fear of technology must be put behind us in favor of the benefits informatics holds.
References
Bible Gateway. (2021). Retrieved from:
https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/1%20Corinthians%2013%3A11
OHerrin, J. K., Fost, N., & Kudsk, K. A. (2004). Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations: Effect on medical record research.Annals of Surgery,239(6), 772778. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1356285/
Sweeney, J. (2017). Healthcare informatics. OJNI, 21. Retrieved from:
https://www.himss.org/resources/healthcare-informatics
