How Biomedical Informatics Is Transforming Healthcare System

Keeping patients safe is essential in today’s health care system, but patient safety events that violate that safety are increasing each year. It was only recently, that the focus on patient safety was reinforced by a report prepared by Institute of medicine (IOM) entitled ” To err is human, building a safer health system”(Wakefield & Iliffe,2002).This report found that approx-imately 44,000 to 98,000 deaths occur each year due to medical errors and that the majority was preventable. Deaths due to medical errors exceed deaths due to many other causes such as like HIV infections, breast cancer and even traffic accidents (Wakefield & Iliffe, 2002). After this IOM reports, President Clinton established quality interagency

Patient safety is of major concern in healthcare settings due to the preventable nature of events that sometimes lead to serious injury, and even death, for patients. This was catapulted to the forefront of healthcare delivery in 1999 when the Institute of Medicine wrote a scathing report; To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, that highlighted "the lack of safety for patients in healthcare organizations" (Ulrich and Kear 2014). The National Patient Safety

The National Patient Safety Goals were created in response to the IOM article, To Err is Human: Building Safer Health Systems. These goals were written to address patient safety and are tailored depending on the health care setting to which they are written for. They address system wide solutions rather than focusing on whom or how the error was made. Medical errors have been noted as being the 8th leading cause of death in the U.S. with the most frequent of these errors being medication related (Johnson, K., Bryant, C., Jenkins, M., Hiteshew, C., & Sobol, K. 2010). Therefore a great focus on these goals is needed across the health care continuum. The goals are updated and amended on a regular basis using evidence-based research, in response to areas with high errors in patient safety.

Hughes (2008) quoting from the , the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality handbook stated that “many view quality health care as the overarching umbrella under which patient safety resides”. Friedman, Encinosa, Jiang & Mutter (2009) found that “safety events that result in hospital readmissions lead to hefty a financial burden on the institution”. In addition they believe that if more attention is given to address and “ assess the full extra cost of safety events and the factors influencing the rate of safety events, that strategies could be developed for health plans to improve incentives for safety” Friedman, Encinosa, Jiang & Mutter (2009). The Institute of Medicine (IOM) considers patient safety “indistinguishable from the

The changes in healthcare over the last several years have been dramatic. All parties, providers, insurers, and the Federal Government are looking for ways to reduce cost and increase quality. The report by the Institute for Medicine in 1999, “To Err is Human” spurred increasing scrutiny in medical care to improve quality at same and looking for ways to reduce risk to patients and increase safety. Discussion of solutions

The Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) (1999) report To Err is Human revealed the United States healthcare system to be a rather unsafe environment for patients estimating that as many as 96,000 patients died or were seriously injured due to preventable medical errors. Incidentally, studies conducted as recently as 2011 have suggested that the actual rate of preventable medical error occurrence may be three times the IOM’s initial estimation (Andel, Davidow, Hollander, & Moreno, 2012). Statistics this extreme cannot be attributed to the mistakes or substandard practices of individual healthcare providers alone and thus it is imperative that healthcare organizations begin to seek out solutions at the system’s level (Geary, 2014). Therefore, it

The Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) publication of the landmark reports To Err is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century led many healthcare agencies to begin investigating ways to transform the healthcare industry. To Err is Human, published in 1999 outlined that despite rising healthcare costs, quality and patient outcomes were not improving. To Err is Human hypothesized that faulty processes and not people were to blame and set a goal that in the five years following the report, a reduction of 50% of healthcare errors would occur. In 2001, IOM published their report, Crossing the Chasm. In the years since their first published report, there was no noticeable improvement in the quality of healthcare. In the Crossing the Chasm report, the IOM introduced a six-aim framework to transform healthcare and improve quality. Fast-forward to 2010 and the Affordable Care Act. In the face of rising healthcare costs, 17% of the gross domestic product and rising, the government sought to control costs and improve quality by shifting from a fee for service healthcare system to a health care system where providers and hospitals receive reimbursement related to the quality of care and outcomes.

The Health Care Industry is complex and is responsible for the health of the country (The Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania; Outcome Engineering, 2010), and ultimately of the world. Unfortunately, according to the Institute of Medicine's comprehensive report, "To Err Is Human," avoidable medical errors annually kill 44,000 - 98,000 hospital patients (Reiling, Knutzen, & Stoecklein, 2003). In addition, as of March 31, 2010, the ten most frequently reported sentinel events within U.S. healthcare organizations are: "wrong site surgery; suicide; operative/post-operative complication; delay in treatment; medical error; patient fall; unintended retention of a foreign body; assault, rape or homicide; perinatal death or loss of function; patient death or injury in restraints" (HealthLeaders Media, 2010). Clearly, many of these

Quality and safety initiatives are driving important changes in the U.S. health care delivery system. Quality in health care is defined as the degree to which health services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes are consistent with current professional knowledge (Nash & Goldfarb, 2006, p. 6). The Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, To Err is Human, states that most of the medical errors are resulted from system error and processes. Medical Errors account for 98,000 deaths per year in the US. They increase disability, costs, and decrease confidence in the US health care system (Pham, Aswani, Rosen, Lee, Huddle, Weeks, & Pronovost, 2012). And because of this, the IOM established six aims for improvement. These are safety (care should be as safe for patients in health care facilities as in their homes); effectiveness (the science and evidence behind health care should be applied and serve as the standard in the delivery of care); efficiency (care and service should be cost effective, and waste should be removed from the system); timeliness (patients should experience no waits or delays in receiving care and service); patient-centeredness (the system of care should revolve around the patient, respect patient preferences, and put the patient in control); and equity (unequal treatment should be a fact of the past; disparities in care should be eradicated). These six aims should be measured in order to assess whether the health care

The face of health care is changing today with the emergence of new technology. This technology comes in the form of electronic health record (EHR) system. Electronic health record, which is digital medical information collected contains records of patient diagnosis, treatments, medication information and other data relevant to the care of patients. This system (EHR) allows healthcare facilities to save and recover detailed information on patients that will be needed used by healthcare providers during hospitalizations and across care settings. EHR has become the new face of storing patient’s medical information which has replaced the old concept of paper documentation. It is believed that electronic health records can

In the Australian health care industry, patient safety is the prevention of harm to patients (IOM, 2000). There are many clinical quality and safety issues in the health care industry. It is important to address these issues because health care is a tumultuous environment. An essential part of improving the safety and quality of care provided to patients is the gathering, analysis and use of information regarding clinical performance across the organisation and implementing quality improvement strategies.

In today’s health care system, “quality” and “safety” are one in the same when it comes to patient care. As Florence Nightingale described our profession long ago, it takes work and vigilance to ensure we are doing the best we can to care for our patients. (Mitchell, 2008)

“Information is power” as the popular saying goes, is never proper than now with the current digital revolution. This digital revolution has impacted every major industry (including the healthcare industry). The healthcare industry is experiencing an ever increasing production of data which has resulted in the growth of new hardware and software and specialties (Hoyt & Yoshihashi, 2014) to handle the processing and transformation of these data into information and knowledge. The utilization of these information and knowledge to drive quality patient care has been difficult for several reasons. One of the major reasons for this according to Hoyt and Yoshihashi (2014) is that technology is advancing faster than healthcare professionals can assimilate into the practice of clinical medicine and public health. One of the specialties concerned with the health data generation, transformation and the adoption of information technologies (IT) in healthcare is health informatics (HI).

As technology evolves and it is widely applied in medical practice, the need for informatics and its multiple tools increases every day. Enhanced communication, sharing of information and knowledge, telehealth and biomedical equipment are only some of the areas that informatics is involved.

Bioinformatics is a multi-disciplinary field which involves health information technology to improve the efficacy of health care by incorporating better quality, efficient and new technologies. Health informatics is an amalgamation of various disciplines like information science, computer science, social science, management science, behavioral science and others. There are various sub categories in health informatics like the “clinical informatics, pathological informatics, pharmacy informatics, public health informatics, community health informatics, home health informatics, nursing informatics, medical informatics, consumer health informatics, and clinical bio informatics” [1]. In the last 40 years, bioinformatics field has grown beyond