1) Cost – The initial cost of mHealth equipment has acted a barrier in adoption. From the mHealth solution’s development perspective – the development and maintenance costs are also hindering the adoption.
2) Interoperability – There has been a deficiency of standards which mandate interoperability across the various mHealth solutions. This is one of the major reasons for limiting the scalability of mHealth solutions. The consumers often transmit data they collect using their mobile device to their health records or health care provider, which generally aids the provider in diagnosis. The health care provider can also possibly incorporate this data in the patient/consumer’s EHR (Electronic Health Record). Such prospects could raise various multi layered issues relating interoperability (e.g. - technical, semantic, legal, organizational).
3) Liability – Discerning liability emerging from the use of mHealth solution has been a complex issue of concern due to the involvement of various bodies: mHealth solution manufacturer, health care provider, any authority or body which is involved in providing the diagnosis or even the internet service provider. The impairment to the consumer health could possibly come from numerous sources like – an erroneous diagnosis by a health care provider (based on data which was not accurate), a mistake made by an IT professional, a faulty device, the inability or wrong usage of device by a consumer. The possibilities are endless.
mHealth
Even though within the Managed care trends there have been many rapid transformations throughout the years with the HIPAA laws enforcements throughout health care facilities within the United States and Obamacare. Currently, there are challenges ahead with the healthcare reform due to the new presidency stirring up changes with health insurance and getting rid of Obamacare. Throughout the managed care trends chronic condition management have affected two-thirds of the baby boomer’s generation causing them to have chronic health conditions that them to receive medical treatment constantly with elevated health care cost. Next, a trend of having the options available for mobile health has grown tremendously by allowing many a chance to gain access
One of the most important characteristics of an EHR while storing the clinical information is its ability to be interoperable: to share that information among other authorized users. If different information systems cannot communicate or interact with each other, then sharing is not possible. In order to achieve the objective to exchange clinical
One of the challenges of health information exchange is privacy and security. Even though having electronic health information exchange reduces a lot of privacy and security issues, it raises new issues as well. A breach that formerly affected a single paper record now can expose an entire database of patient records. At the same time, health information exchange presents powerful new ways to improve the privacy and security of patients ' data, including encryption, authentication and authorization controls, and electronic audit trails. Two of the biggest challenges we’ve encountered are patient matching/master patient index synchronization issues and the vendors’ variable use of interoperability standards. The biggest issues we’ve experienced, so far are relate to the MPI synchronization of patients across all the entities. Public HIEs, as well as the private HIE vendors, should focus on this challenge. Technically, interoperable platforms, EHR’s, are often hindered by the inability to determine an exact patient match, because the eMPI solutions aren’t robust enough. This also potentially creates data integrity and patient safety issues, if the clinical data goes across multiple records. There also some struggles with the variable use of the interoperability standards between the EHR vendors. One of
Healthcare systems are highly complex, fragmented, and use multiple information technology systems and vendors who incorporate different standards resulting in inefficiency, waste, and medical errors (Healthinformatics, 2016). A patient 's medical information often gets trapped in silos, which prevents information from being shared with members of the healthcare community (Healthinformatics, 2016). With increasing healthcare costs, a system needed to be created that would lead to the development and nationwide implementation of an interoperable health information technology system to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare. Introducing the National Health Information Network (NHIN), this organization can be defined as a set of
Integration will lead to superior diagnoses as doctors will have access to medical records from across the country, enabling them to draw on the diagnoses of other doctors facing similar situations. It will also allow for seamless care as records for the same patients will be instantly accessible and fully up to date wherever they go. The application layer will be standardized, with a consumer-facing mobile and web application and a doctor-facing web portal. While the way care is administered differs from hospital to hospital and clinic to clinic, what a practitioner needs from an IT solution will remain relatively constant.
The Role of Technology in Rising Health Care Costs. What should or shouldn’t be done.
Currently, the topic of interoperability is at the forefront of health data management. While lacking a standard definition of interoperability itself, the National Alliance for Health Information Technology defines it as “the ability of different information technology systems and software applications to communicate, to exchange data accurately, effectively, and consistently, and to use the information that has been exchanged.” Interoperability now stands at the center of health IT’s future, as the success of electronic health records (EHRs) relies upon the exchange of health information. In essence, health information is already interoperable, as providers can write down data on a
In 2013, the HIMSS Board of Directors defined interoperability in health care as having the ability to have different information technology systems and software applications communicate, exchange date, and then use the information that has been exchanged (HIMSS, 2015). Data exchange permits data accessibility between organizational boundaries, while interoperability means health systems have the ability to work together in order to advance the health status of the individuals and communities the system serves. For two systems to be interoperable, they must be able to exchange data that can be understood by a user (HIMSS, 2015). This is extremely important to the goals of HITECH and meaningful use because it aligns with the government standard
For the electronic health record to be considered as a true clinical decision support system, it must be possible to access and integrate patients’ clinical information that is collected throughout their lives, guaranteeing up-to-date, safe and congruent information, immediately accessible at the place of care. Moreover, because of the considerable increase in the capacity to develop and manufacture systems that employ smart components highly integrated and miniaturized, wearable devices facilitate the home monitoring of patients with chronic diseases and their information should be integrated in existing electronic health records. Therefore, the interoperability is an essential requirement of eHealth to allow the integration of care into a
Brailer (2005) acknowledges that a sizeable number of citizens receive treatment from multiple providers at a time. Interoperability is a gateway for many business ventures in healthcare to accommodate for patients being admitted in multiple provider organizations. All healthcare professionals, especially managers, must communicate effectively. A good example of interoperability is transformation of electronic medical records, or recruiting physician specialists to operate on a specific procedure (Hellberg & Gronlund, 2013).
In health care, patients’ lives are in the hands of the health care practitioners, health care organizations, insurance companies, and to some degree, even health care technology. The growth and future implications of evidence-based medicine (EBM) through improvement of technology in health care are important today, because health care practitioners and organizations want to ultimately decrease cost, improve quality of care, and increase access to health care (Glandon, Smaltz, & Slovensky, 2014, p. 28). One way to achieve these goals is through the implementation and improvement of EBM and interoperability which will enhance the efficiency of work production resulting in these positive outcomes. According to Glandon, Smaltz, and Slovensky (2014), EBM is an “information management and learning strategy that seeks to integrate clinical expertise with the best evidence available to make effective clinical decisions that will ultimately improve patient care,” (p. 6). “Interoperability is the ability of different information and communications technology systems and software applications to communicate, to exchange data accurately, effectively, and consistently, and to use information that has been exchanged,” (Iroju, Soriyan, Gambo, & Olaleke, 2013, para. 1). Without interoperability and EBM, fundamental data and information such as patient records cannot be easily shared across and within enterprises having a direct impact on the quality of care. It
As the implementation of electronic health records (EHR) progress nationwide, the concepts of interoperability and health information exchange (HIE) must be discussed. The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (2005, p. 2) define interoperability as “the ability of health information systems to work together within and across organizational boundaries in order to advance the effective delivery of healthcare for individuals and communities.” Interoperability is the enabling of two systems, including those that do not share
M-Health is a term used by health care providers for practice medicine with support of mobile devices. In modern life a lot people especially in metropolitan area use mobile devices such as smart phones, different gadgets that can record vitals, level of heart rate est. Deborah Estrin Professor of Computer science and co-founder of M-Health program gave talk how electronic mobile devices and electronic applications can be used to record, analyze and send personal health data to the patient and to his health care provider. (TEDMED 2013) Using electronic mobile devices we generate traces. When providers capture and analyze data for different reasons they do not give this data back. This information could be analyzed by applications and give to
Health resource utilizing ehealth to aid in electronic methods such as telemedicine, electronic medical records, health informatic and evidence-based medicine transfers health information for professional and health consumers (Brown and Dickson,2010).The development of ehealth is essential to increase the quality of healthcare and access by choosing eHealth as a part of the health policy and coordinating countries political, financial and technically. Electronic health is a necessary technical strategy to improve the health of citizens and provide information to countries for life-saving decisions utilizing ehealth tools (DeMonte, DeMonte, & Thorn, 2015). The ehealth system support the objectives in a economically feasible
It is important to understand that patients are very satisfied with electronic health systems. For example, patients see a vast improvement in the speed at which they are being seen when they go their doctors’ office. Patients no longer have to wait on their physicians for hours due to the fact that their information can be readily available to their physicians when they come to see them. Moreover, all their information is transparent to their health care provider since all their data is in electronic form.