Health Care Information Technologies (HCIT) can assist improve the overall quality of health care delivery but it’s faced with many challenges (Michael 2010). Privacy as well as security concerns of the user are some of the challenges for managing Health Care Information Technologies (HCIT). Data from in-home sensors as well as medical records is typically communicated electronically through the Internet and wireless transmissions. Thus, this heightens the danger of compromising the privacy and security of persons. When personal health information is connected to the Internet it exposes this information to more hostile attacks contrast to the paper-based medical Connecting records. Once this data is available electronically, it opens the door for hackers as well as other wicked attackers to access the records plus individuals who are authorized (Roosta 2006).
Installation of Health Care Information Technologies systems in a hospital or medical doctor’s office is much more complicated than installation of software on a computer which is connected to the Internet. Even though Health Care Information Technologies systems may perhaps put a stop to common errors, they as well have the potential to initiate new ones (Devon 2010). Overreliance on the accurateness of Electronic medical records (EMRs), for instance, can result to heinous errors if a patient record contains false data.
Another challenging issue is whether Health Care Information Systems will be accepted in a different way by different groups and lead to further differences in the quality of health care for different peoples. The cost of installing Health Care Information Technologies systems is also a major hindrance in adopting these systems (Devon 2010).
How existing and future HCITs should be managed?
There are existing technical solutions that can be applied to health care to enhance security and privacy in a multi-user setting: Role based access control which results in a decrease of the complexity as well as security administration costs in large networked applications, encryption of data, Authentication mechanisms so as to make certain that the data is coming from the person or unit it is claiming to be from (Roosta 2006). There be should reforms in the Laws Governing the practice of Medicine. The government can create suitable incentives for doctors as well as hospitals to accept information technology as well as decision-support systems (Devon 2010).
References
Meingast, M. & Roosta, T. (2006). Security and privacy issues with health care information technology. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17946702
Michael, B. (2010). Using Health Information Technology to Manage Your Information.
Retrieved from http://healthinsurance.about.com/od/healthinsurancebasics /a/health_IT_overview.htm
Devon, M. (2010). Health Information Technology:Benefits and Problems. Retrieved from http://www.insideronline.org/summary.cfm?id=12429
