The Impact of Computer Science on Health Care & Medicine

Over the past decade, virtually every major industry invested heavily in computerization. The heath care industry was no exception to the rise in the use of technology. These technologies are starting to allow health care practitioners to offer faster, and more efficient patient care than ever before. No doubt this is the right direction we expect health care to follow.

In this discussion board post, I will compare and contrast informatics and clinical informatics. Then I will give two examples of clinical informatics found in my organization that has been found to improve patient care. I will also give two examples of how my nurse manager can utilize data management in order to improve patient care. Lastly, I will discuss why President Bush mandated that all health records be in electronic form by the year 2014.

Worldwide use of computer technology in medicine began in the early 1950s with the rise of the computers. In 1949, Gustav Wagner established the first professional organization for informatics in Germany. Medical informatics research units began to appear during the 1970s in Poland and in the U.S. Since then the development of high-quality health informatics research, education and infrastructure has been a goal of the U.S. and the European Union. (NYU graduate training program, 2010) Changes in the healthcare environment produced fundamental shifts in the delivery of healthcare. The altering landscape of healthcare is creating a huge demand for health data analytics. The growth and maturity of healthcare informatics over the past decade has been a prime catalyst in positioning the healthcare industry for the changes posed by reform measures. By understanding the process of analytics, clinical informatics specialists say healthcare providers have the insight necessary to make the process adjustments in the future.(Riskin, 2013)

Medicine in the 21st Century has continued to push the boundaries of science to unthinkable limits, often fusing complex technological elements and concepts together to achieve great feats. Two major contributing factors that have increased the use of high-technology in modern day medicine are Evidence-based Medicine and Health-Informatics. One study completed at Ohio State University (2016) proved how beneficial combining high-technologies such as Health Informatics Tools (HIT) and Evidence-Based Medicine can be. "Achieving a vision of 'interventional informatics ' will requires us to re-think how we study HIT tools in order to generate the necessary evidence-base that can support and justify their use as a primary means of improving the human condition" (Embi et al, 2016). This synergistic effect is just one of many countless examples of the successful advancements in medicine today. These strings of successful advancements in medicine can almost certainly be linked to the progression of specific

This stream of research eventually developed into a dedicated discipline, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIM), with wide appeal and broad consensus for optimism. In 1970, Schwartz announced in the New England Journal of Medicine that clinical computing would likely be commonplace in the “not too distant future.” The use of computerized clinical information systems to support hospital operation as well as clinical activities started to flourish in the early 1990s. Besides the significant technological breakthroughs, including the availability of enterprise-level database management systems (DBMS) and health data standards such as ICD and HL7, new legislation and advocacy by federal funding agencies also played a key role. International Statistical Classification of Diseases: Standard diagnostic classification developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) for its member states to report mortality and morbidity statistics. In the United States, ICD-9-CM (ICD 9th Revision, Clinical Modification) is widely used to codify diagnostic data for administrative (such as billing) purposes. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/datawh/ftpserv/ftpICD9/ftpICD9.htm. Health Level Seven (HL7) is an all-volunteer, not-for-profit organization. It oversees the development of international health data exchange standards. http://www.hl7.org. Financial investments to implement large-scale health IT systems were made by the Agency for

Demographic shifts in the global population, greater levels of technological disruption due to the Internet, social media and the en masse adoption of smartphones and tablet PCs are together re-defining the healthcare informatics market. System and informatics theories have emerged as the foundational elements of healthcare informatics supported by the Data, Information. Knowledge (DIK) Model which acts as a taxonomy for these developments (Haugh, 2005). Systems and informatics theories along with the DIK Model form the ontological foundations of healthcare informatics field of research occurring today and will continue to provide a basis for further research (Braganza, 2004). The intent of this analysis is to evaluate the contributions of systems and informatics, the role of the DIK Model, expert systems in nurse care and medicine, and the use of decision aids and decision support systems. All of these elements are critically important to strategic information systems plans healthcare providers put into place to serve patients while giving healthcare professionals the applications, systems and software they need to excel in their roles (Djellal, Gallouj, 2007).

Recently technology has become a significant part of society, specifically for the medical field. People in the past have expressed concerns about the security and safety of implementing artificial intelligence (AI) into the medical field. Artificial intelligence is a computer system with human capabilities, such as decision making. Research has shown that AI could increase the efficiency and quality of patient care in the medical field. AI could greatly improve efficiency by using software that can analyze all of the symptoms the patient has and the patient’s family history in a shorter period of time than a human doctor could. For the time period from 2000 to 2010 the conversation about artificial intelligence was focused on the ethical

In the clinical practice area of health care; clinical, imaging and bio-informatics help support making diagnoses and treatment planning for patients. As seen in the article by Frankovich et al., and the promotional video of the supercomputer Watson for oncology, the informatics systems sort through the data and is able to provide the best treatment plan possible

The Intro to Health Informatics course has provided a broad range of health information that introduces the core concepts in the biomedical community. Throughout this course, my learning experience in health informatics has advance, for I was able to learn a list of materials including: the relationship of biomedical informatics and its related field; the roles of informatics in decision support systems and related health IT applications; and the importance of biomedicine and the use of biomedical information. In the Biomedical Informatics (4th edition) text book, it reflects the outstanding changes in both computing and health care that continues to occur. These changes have set a high rate of interest in the roles that health IT must play in the health care.

Health informatics is the bridging of computer science, information and the health care field. This interdisciplinary field can be applied to a range of medical fields such as nursing, biomedicine, medicine and subspecialties such as immunology (immunoinformatics). Informatics not only has roles to play in day-to-day areas of immunology such as data storage/retrieval, decision support, standards and electronic health care records but also in research and education such as data mining and simulation systems (Coiera, 2002). Informatics and more specifically, health informatics first started being used in in the late 1950s with the rise of computers (Ho, 2010). Technologies such as computers allowed practitioners and researches

In today’s generation technology is the key point in all of our lives. With all those new technological inventions a huge percent of those inventions refer to the medical field.

Techniques and technologies in the medical field constantly evolve and change. With such a huge increase in information, there is

“Bioinformatics is sub-field of biomedical informatics that is concerned with biological data, particularly DNA and genomic information, as opposed to clinical, public health or other data” (Hoyt et al., 2014, p. 5). Bioinformatics is a relatively new field started by the Human Genome Project and have built databases for a variety functional data as a means for accelerating research (Maojo & Kulikowski, 2003, p. 515). Although health informatics, biomedical informatics and bioinformatics have different scope, historical background and application of scientific foundations, all three of the fields uses technology to collect data, information and knowledge which can add positive contribution to medical, clinical, public health and research in some way shape or form.

Medical technology encompasses a wide range of healthcare products and is used to diagnose, monitor, and treat diseases or medical conditions that affect humans. This may included but not limited too, pharmaceuticals, vaccines, and medical equipment. Such technologies are intended to improve the quality of healthcare delivered through earlier diagnosis, less invasive treatment options and reductions in hospital stays and rehabilitation times. Recent advances in medical technology have also focused on cost reduction. Medical technology may include medical devices, information technology, biotech, and healthcare services. The impacts of medical technology may involve social and ethical issues. For example physicians may seek objective information from technology rather than listening to subjective patient reports. A major contributor of healthcare expenditure in America is the advancement of medical technology. According to several studies it is shown that there is a correlation between the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) and money allocated to healthcare. One of the leading theories is that medical technology is growing faster than expected.

Healthcare delivery system in recent times is confronted with a lot of problems, cost, accessibility and quality of care. To be able to address these problems, healthcare organizations rely on information science technology to enhance cost-effectiveness, and safe quality care.