Shaping Health Informatics

When we started the semester last August, I still don’t have any idea what we will be doing for the graduate course. Way back college, I was used to taking class in the typical set-up of the professor teaching the lesson while the students just listen. I still vividly remember the first day of class when our professor, Dra Iris Isip-Tan, told us how we will be learning for HI 201

mHealth

According to a study conducted last March 2015 by the National Telehealth Center, it was said that the Philippines is the social media capital of the world. Out of the total population in the country, 115 million are mobile users (basing on the number of mobile subscriptions) and 32 million have access to internet. Most of them  use mobile internet to access social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Viber, Instagram, etc. With continuous increasing number of users, numerous innovative application are developed to assist Health Care Providers in providing health care by the use of handheld devices; most of the tasks include but not limited to: point of care health record maintenance and secured access by authorized users; information and time management; communications and consulting; reference and information gathering (CDSS); patient management and monitoring; clinical decision-making; and medical education and training (Ventola, 2014).

This week’s driving question, how can mobile applications be useful in primary care? I picked the project for my HI210 (System Analysis and Design) which focused on providing care during time of emergency.

Electronic Health Records: A Challenge

Last week, we have discussed the different frameworks in Enterprise Architectures that are being used in building information systems in the previous post. We will now be moving further into the topic of Electronic Health Records.

First, let’s define the major term used. What is an Electronic Health Record?

Enterprise Architecture in Healthcare

For this week’s topic is digging deeper of how the healthcare information systems—like the Philippine Health Information Exchange that I have discussed in the previous post—being planned, developed, maintained in the long run.

Handling information systems vary depending on how it is designed to function it is expected to meet. Some are simple, some are quite large and complex. There were instances that simple small IS are single-handedly planned and managed by the end-user; and of course, IS for huge enterprises, due to its large and complex design, there are different subsystems and corresponding conflicts that are needed to tend to and would really need a planning phase for the IS be successfully useful and be able to deliver maximum business value.

It is not new that over the years, the technology and the demands increase. The Organization do not have any choice but adapt and/or improve their existing information technology and infrastructure. However, that doesn’t mean that the increase of the complexity of the system is giving the full benefit it should provide to the organization. There were times that costs are high to develop and maintain IT systems but it doesn’t deliver due to misalignment of the IT goals and what information the system produces with what the business needs. To address this growing concern, this enters the concept of Enterprise Architecture.

What is an Enterprise Architecture, you might ask?

Philippine Health Information Exchange

I have mentioned in the previous post the importance of Governance and Management in Health Informatics. In the Philippine set-up, as stipulated in the 2014-2020 Philippine e-Health Strategic Plan (PeHSP), Department of Health (DOH) and Department of Science and Technology (DOST) teamed up for the development and implementation e-Health in the country.