What exactly is Health IT or Health Information Technology?

Health has never been easy to maintain despite the vast medicinal and technological advancements. The entire healthcare industry is facing challenges in bringing a brighter and healthier future while keeping the costs manageable. This cannot be fulfilled by only developing new drugs and treatments. This also depends largely on the care provided to patients, preventing the diseases from spreading, treating the diseases in the best manner, and so on. The stated healthcare aspects cannot be managed manually using hardbound registers year after year and keeping them in a record room. This data and information need to be used to record patient data so as to improve healthcare delivery and patient experience. This data can also be utilized by both healthcare practitioners and ministry of health/government agencies for in-depth analysis of the diseases and treatments. This purpose is fulfilled by Health Information Technology, or what is also known as Health IT.

Health IT has expanded the scope of patient care from a three-step process, i.e., evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment to an array of medical information which is specific to individual patients. This includes everything from the evaluation and diagnosis to diet, exercise, lifestyle, genetic predisposition, and much more. These details help healthcare professionals like doctors, pharmacists, and other providers to extend better care to the patients. This also serves as a database for those healthcare professionals who are involved in identifying and studying short term and long term improvements in patient care.

Moreover, with the advancement in health IT, the patient history, as well as the prescriptions, can now be captured electronically and transmitted between doctors, nutritionists and pharmacies in a way that the efficiency in the field of medication has been increased and the dosage errors and delays are reduced. This availability of patients’ history and past records makes it easier for the doctors to get to the nitty-gritty of illness and begin with a more appropriate treatment at the earliest possible.

For a layman to easily understand Health Information Technology, it can be said that it is Information Technology (IT) applied to health and health care. This approach involves capturing health information and its management through computerized systems. It further provides a secured exchange of this health information between providers, payers, quality personnel, and consumers.

Key Benefits of Health IT

Some of the key benefits of Health IT are highlighted here:
For health care professionals:
  • Improves effectiveness in healthcare services
  • Increases productivity in healthcare management
  • Helps prevent the chances of medical errors and delays
  • Increases in healthcare accuracy
  • Reduces administrative work, misunderstandings, and delay in communication
  • Minimizes paperwork and unproductive tasks
  • Makes real-time communication of health-related information transmission between healthcare professionals possible
  • Makes information readily available and easily accessible
  • Caters to reduce healthcare costs considerably
Towards Public Health and Welfare:
  • Analysis of data strengthens the probability of early detection of infectious disease outbreaks
  • The data gathered is more accurate and can be retrieved as and when required
  • Chronic diseases can be tracked and managed effectively
  • Analysis and evaluation of healthcare services and predictions for the future can be more reliable
The Rising Need for Health IT Professionals

Healthcare industry is one such industry which has an utmost need for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation today. This helps in breaking down the data and workflow silos. This also triggers the growth of medical science and its application in healthcare services. It marks the dawn of incorporation of IT in Healthcare practices, thereby helping to overcome one of the biggest challenges to medicine.

It is for this reason that the healthcare industry is currently in need of relevantly educated and trained professionals who can manage the rising demands of the healthcare industry, and Health IT is one of the most critical aspects of it. At the International Institute of Health Management and Research (IIHMR), New Delhi, we conduct highly industry-centric programs in health management that are particularly created to help the learners meet the global benchmarks of the industry. The Post Graduate Diploma in Hospital and Health Management is an MBA equivalent course that has been deliberately designed by the industry experts to provide the aspiring students with rich and deepened knowledge, practical exposure, and hands-on industry experience. This enables the students to gain a thorough understanding of the various important aspects of the healthcare arena, while also providing them with the real-life know-how of the corporate world. The focus is to enable the transformation of the learners into skilled and career-ready professionals under the able guidance of the best of mentors.

Plot no. 3, Sector 18A, Dwarka, Phase-II, 
New Delhi - 110075 India
Phone:- 011-3041890

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