What is health information technology

Rasmussen University is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, an institutional accreditation agency recognized by the U. Department of Education. What do HIT professionals do? What is the importance of HIT?

The intersection of healthcare and technology What is health information technology? Request More Information. Talk with an admissions advisor today. First Name Please enter your first name. Last Name Please enter your last name. Contact Information Email Address Please enter your email address. Phone Number Please enter your phone number. ZIP Code Please enter your five digit zip code.

Program Program of Interest Please choose a program. Credential Degree Level Desired Please choose a campus. Constantly evolving regulations and technologies allow for lifelong learning and continuous professional development. As healthcare advances, HIT professionals can expect to be in high demand as the health sector continues to expand.

Demand is on the rise at all levels of education and credentialing. Employment of medical records and health information technicians is projected to grow 8 percent from to The Bureau of Labor Statistics cites medical records and health information technicians as one of the 20 fastest growing occupations in the US.

These figures are just averages — many professionals report higher salaries. Degree Requirements The courses may be used as academic instruction in working toward the national certification exam. A graduate of the two-year instructional program is awarded the Associate of Applied Science degree in Health Information Technology. Students enrolled in their final term of study are eligible to apply for admission to the national certification exam, which upon passing it, will provide them with the credentials of RHIT or Registered Health Information Technician.

Health IT makes it possible for health care providers to better manage patient care through the secure use and sharing of health information. By developing secure and private electronic health records for most Americans and making health information available electronically when and where it is needed, health IT can improve the quality of care, even as it makes health care more cost effective. There are many ways that health IT can be used to improve the quality of primary care services.

Select for information about clinical decision support. Content last reviewed August Browse Topics. Topics A-Z. There is limited evidence about the efficacy and safety of e-consults, but studies have shown that e-consults may reduce patient wait times for specialist appointments and opinions.

Studies evaluating community based Remote patient monitoring telemonitoring 40 - 44 have shown that it improves patient outcomes for certain chronic conditions including; heart failure, stroke, COPD, asthma and hypertension. Patient data management system PDMS are systems that automatically retrieve data from bedside medical equipment namely patient monitor, ventilator, intravenous pump, and so forth. The data is subsequently summarized and restructured to aid healthcare providers in interpreting the data.

A systematic review 45 studied the clinical impact of PDMS and found that such systems increased the time spent on direct patient care by reducing the time spent on charting. In addition, PDMS systems reduced the occurrence of errors medication errors, ventilator incidents, intravenous incidents, and other incidents. The review also found that 2 articles reported an improvement in clinical outcomes when a PDMS was integrated with a clinical decision support system.

Research shows that telemedicine technology seems to improve clinical outcomes for certain medical conditions and, seems to enhance accessibility to healthcare services and foster patient-physician collaboration. Apart from the limited evidence on PDMS, the impact of telemedicine on patient safety does not seem to be very clear.

Electronic incident reporting systems are web-based systems that allow healthcare providers who are involved in safety events to voluntarily report such incidents. Such systems can be integrated with the electronic health record EHR to enable abstraction of data and automated detection of adverse events through trigger tools. Electronic incident reporting systems potentially have the following advantages; standardize reporting structure, standardize incident action workflow, rapid identification of serious incidents and trigger events, while automating data entry and analysis.

Published research shows that healthcare organizations that have moved to an electronic reporting system have experienced a significant increase in reporting frequency. Numerous studies have considered the outcomes of implementing an electronic medical record on healthcare quality and patient safety, with a majority of studies showing favorable results. Although, some studies demonstrated negative outcomes which continues to evoke dispute.

Campanella et al 48 published perhaps the largest and most recent metaanalysis on the impact of electronic health records on healthcare quality and patient safety, which included 47 studies. The results favored the use of electronic medical records. The meta-analysis did not find any impact on overall mortality. Computerized physician order entry and CDS are probably one of the most beneficial health information technologies for improving patient safety.

Currently, there is insufficient evidence to reach a conclusion on patient safety outcomes for the following health information technologies; electronic sign-out and hand-off tools, smart pumps, bar-code medication administration, retained surgical items detectors, patient portals, telemedicine and electronic incident reporting.

It is worth mentioning, that there is evidence that the aforementioned technologies seem to improve healthcare processes and non-safety outcomes Table 1 summarizes the evidence on various HIT technologies on patient safety. Published studies on health information technology exhibit variation in outcomes between different organizations when using the same technology. This has been attributed in the literature to the operationalization of health information technology within the complex adaptive health care system.

Sittig and Singh 49 suggested a conceptual socio-technical model that accounts for key factors which influence the success of health information technology interventions. The 8 dimensions of their model are human-computer interface, workflow and communication, clinical content, internal organizational policies, people, hardware and software, external factors and system measurement and monitoring.

The authors of this review recommend a comprehensive framework for organizations looking to improve patient safety outcomes when using health information technology which includes the following:. Health Information Governance. Organizations must establish a health information oversight mechanism that includes leadership and relevant stakeholders.

Safety Risk Identification. Organizations need to identify areas that health information technology might aid in improving patient safety namely, medication safety, guideline adherence, and so forth. Stake-Holder Involvement: Stakeholders need to be involved in all phases of health information projects from planning and implementation until continuous improvement.

The most important stakeholder must be the system end-user and process owner. Informed Decision: Organizations need to review the cost effectiveness of suggested technologies, which includes conducting an evidence based decision and an evaluation of the current information technology infrastructure including software and hardware.

Sufficient Training: Organizations need to ensure that all relevant line staff receive sufficient training on the use of the proposed health information technology.

Gradual Implementation: Rolling out the technology in a gradual stepped approach is crucial to avoid disruption of current processes and systems. Continuous evaluation and monitoring of patient safety outcomes: Organizations need to measure patient safety outcomes on a continuous basis especially during the initial implementation to ensure that the new technology achieves its intended outcome. Technology optimization: Organizations need to modify and finetune the implemented technology based on user feedback and patient safety outcomes.

Regular technology updates: Organizations must ensure that health information technologies are continuously updated to comply with recent best clinical practices, regulatory standards, and technical stability. We studied the impact of a broad array of health information technologies which yielded studies with heterogeneous methodologies and interventions. Other sources of variability in the reviewed studies could be due to different vendors, software, quality, usability, and settings of implementation.

Most studies on health information technology were in English, and we limited our search as such, which might result in the exclusion of relevant international articles.

In conclusion, health information technology improves patient safety by reducing medication errors, reducing adverse drug reactions and improving compliance to practice guidelines.

There should be no doubt that health information technology is an important tool for improving healthcare quality and safety, but healthcare organizations need to be selective in which technology to invest in, as literature shows that some technologies have limited evidence in improving patient safety outcomes. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Journal List Saudi Med J v. Saudi Med J. Yasser K. Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer.

Address correspondence and reprint request to: Dr. E-mail: moc. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract Since the original Institute of Medicine IOM report was published there has been an accelerated development and adoption of health information technology with varying degrees of evidence about the impact of health information technology on patient safety.

Clinical decision support Clinical decision support provides the health care professional with information and patient-specific information.

Bar code medication administration Bar code medication administration systems are electronic systems that integrate electronic medication administration records with bar code technology. Smart pumps Smart pumps are intravenous infusion pumps that are equipped with medication error-prevention software.