Trends in Health Information Systems and Applications (M4C) Essay

Trends in Health Information Systems and Applications (M4C) - Essay Example In the recent years, the use of technology in managing information about medications, doctors’ orders, laboratory results, vital signs, nurses’ notes, and other data related to a specific patient, has been tested and employed by institutions to determine its capability to improve the outcomes of the patient care provided by the health care team. According to Winter et al., (2011), a health information system (HIS) is a system that which â€Å"comprises all the information processing† involved in healthcare delivery through the use of interlinked computers that allow a centralized storage of data for the different health departments and individuals (e.g., pharmacy, laboratory, nursing department, physicians, etc.) which contribute to the overall care provided to patients. Although some studies pointed out the lack of specificity of the benefits of HIS to healthcare institutions, its disadvantages (e.g., ethical issues related to information privacy, human-computer interaction problems, etc.) as well as its cost (Kuhn & Giuse, 2001), findings from other reliable researches serve proof to the emerging importance of keeping a centralized health electronic records storage (Chaudhry et al., 2006).