HIS FIRST SEMESTER

LECTURE | PROF. CHANNEY T. SALAS | PRELIMS A.Y. 2021 - 2022

OVERVIEW OF HEALTH INFORMATICS
LEARNING OBJECTIVES be generated after taking a picture of the patient.
• define health information technology However, there is still a human element wherein
• discuss health care software systems and health we type or encode the data. It means that the data
information ecosystem is already compiled. In electronic records, you
• explain the advantages and disadvantages of health have to write down everything in a piece of paper
informatics in the cloud depending on how the medical record works in a
• describe the status of health informatics in the given hospital. It may be put in a folder then being
Philippines filed in a cabinet alphabetically. In an automated
LESSON OUTLINE health care information system, you don’t need to
• Health Information Technology arrange it in an alphabetical order; the computer
• Health Care Software Systems will do it for you because there are some
• Health Information Ecosystem processes in that information system that are
already automated.
• Health Informatics in the Cloud
o Interoperable – can be operated by different
o Advantages and Disadvantages
users. Anyone that have the access to the same
• Health Informatics in the Philippines
database all at once. DISCUSSION: Not all
HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
secretaries can have the same access to the
• This is the era of information age. Everything right
same cabinet especially when records are being
now can be googled and searched through the
asked by medical personnel or someone.
internet. Before, you have to go to the library or ask
o IMPROVE MEDICAL CARE: It reduces the
someone to gather information. In terms of hospital
workload on the health care workers. Almost half
work, when you don’t know about the patient, you
of your work in the hospital is not about the patient
have to call on the nurse’s station or ask the doctor or
or case of the medical technologists or test. It is
see through its medical records. As a medtech, you
about writing down results—paperwork,
may try to correlate in the results of the laboratory
especially nurses and doctors (e.g.,
tests with the patient’s disease, illness, or condition.
endorsements, medication, patient’s history,
Through Health Information Technology, all you just
signs and symptoms). Half of their loads is
to do is click on the computer or database on the
paperwork. Additionally, it improves medical care
hospital. Due to this comfortability in handling and
because it gives more time to the health care
collecting the data in the present, there is a huge
provider to make some decisions with regards to
amount of data that becomes perplexing to process
health care management rather than spending
and analyze the same data. Moreover, Health
time for paperwork or even filing the paperwork or
Information Technology helps us to overcome the
distributing information to other departments.
Health Informatics’ challenges in interpreting tons of
o LOWER COSTS: Health care information
data while ensuring that process of analyzing is valid.
systems are expensive. It costs P500,000 for
• Defined (Rouse, 2016) as
smaller hospital while millions for larger hospitals.
o “…the are of IT involving the design,
It lowers costs because it reduces error. When
development, creation, use, and maintenance
there is human element, there is a possibility
of information systems for the healthcare
of error. Humans are driven by emotions and
industry.”
distracted by emotions (e.g., A medtech
▪ IT related to health
professional has personal problems and bothered
▪ Information system – is the marriage of
by those problems He/She might commit some
technology and process in order for us to
mistakes in writing results. Moreover, it reduces
collect, analyze, process, and distribute the
the human element.) Errors are not just costly in
data in the health care industry.
terms of human lives. You have to retract your
(ROUSE, 2016)
results if mistakes are committed.
• “Automated and interoperable healthcare information
o INCREASE EFFICIENCY: reduce error and
systems are expected to (1) improve medical care,
improve medical care.
(2) lower costs, (3) increase efficiency, (4) reduce
o IMPROVE PATIENT SATISFACTION: Single
error, and (5) improve patient satisfaction.”
most important goal if you are a medical
o Automated – data is already automatically
institution to improve patient satisfaction
collected. It doesn’t mean that all information will
TELETUBBIES | BSMLS 2F 1
HIS
LECTURE | PROF. CHANNEY T. SALAS | PRELIMS
OVERVIEW OF HEALTH INFORMATICS
(KUSHNIRUK AND BORYCKI, 2017)
• Provide innovation to health care delivery
o Novel – new
• Connection among users and stakeholders
o Stakeholders – people related to medical care,
health workers, patients, administrators,
investors
o It provides linkage between the users and
stakeholders for easier connection.
• We have two concepts in one regarding health
informatics—Health Information Technology and
Health Information Management.
• Health Information Management – how we manage
the information regarding to health. This is the system
or processes at which we manage the information—
collection, compilation, analyzation and distribution of
information to authorized users and stakeholders.
• Technology – means and tools we employ to manage
the information and put them together—HEALTH
INFORMATICS.
• HEALTH INFORMATICS – application both the
information technology and information management
(systems).
HEALTH CARE SOFTWARE SYSTEM
• EHR (Electronic Health Record)
• PHR (Personal Health record)
• HIE (Health Information Exchange)
• PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications
Systems)
• VNA (Vendor Neutral Archives)
FIRST SEMESTER
A.Y. 2021 - 2022
EHR (ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORD)
• Patient’s official health record in digital form
o There is a separate department for this to keep
electronic medical records. Every patient’s
information, medication, medical intervention,
surgeries are under medical records
• information is shared across multiple healthcare
providers and agencies.
o Especially if hospitals are connected together.
There is rally no need for patients to physically as
one hospital regarding the copy of his/her medical
records. One can simply send the record to the
other hospital (e.g., surgeries). There is a security
component happened between the access of
information for security.
• This is one of the components of the fundamental
components of health infrastructure. At the very core
of having your health information technology is
electronic health report or also known as EMC.
• Through this, information is shared to multiple health
care providers and agencies. Not every medical
record is allowed to seen by the laboratory. There are
certain restrictions as to what particular information
you can see in a medical record. (E.g., a laboratory
wants to know the diagnosis of the patient so he/she
can correlate the laboratory result with disease or
condition of the patient. You have to physically ask for
the medical records in the nurse station through
phone calls.
PHR (PERSONAL HEALTH RECORD)
• person's self-maintained and -documented health
record
o It is a platform for health purposes.
• information typically includes:
o allergies
o family history
o medications taken
o surgeries performed
o hospitalization record
• Upload information to the servers of that hospitals if
you want to admit yourself. There is no need or
minimize time for an interview. Healthcare
professionals will just ask about your pain index.
• Doshia is a web-based framework for story in
managing personal health records.
• INFORMATION REFERS TO THE PICTURE
BELOW: It has a dashboard with a name. There are
certain tabs. Just link this to the hospital’s servers for
synchronize personal health record and the electronic
record of that hospital. There is also an exchange of
health information.
TELETUBBIES | BSMLS 2F 2
HIS FIRST SEMESTER
LECTURE | PROF. CHANNEY T. SALAS | PRELIMS A.Y. 2021 - 2022
OVERVIEW OF HEALTH INFORMATICS
PACS (PICTURE ARCHIVING AND
COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS)
• Securely stores and digitally transmits electronic
images and clinically-relevant reports
• This is widely used in radiology department which is
concerned in medical images like x-ray, colonoscopy,
CT scan. The radiology department can securely
send and digitally transmit those electronic images to
the doctors or physicians

HIE (HEALTH INFORMATION EXCHANGE)

• Health data clearinghouse which is comprised of
healthcare organizations with interoperability pact
to share data among their health information
technology systems
o It is like a warehouse that collects and distributes
information. If each department or hospital has
interconnectivity on their information, this is the
central storage point at which everything is
collected and distributed.
o Interoperability – is the ability of a system or a
product to work with other systems or to be
operated by different users without special efforts
from users.
o Pact – memorandum of agreement that they can
interoperate with each other.
• Health Information Exchange – a web of different
health information systems across different hospitals
or agencies
o e.g., admitted to municipal hospitals and referred
to a higher tertiary hospital—if health information
exchange exists, all you have to do is gather your
things without bringing your own files.
o Pasig City
VNA (VENDOR NEUTRAL ARCHIVES)
• Integrate radiology into the main hospital workflow
• stores medical images in a standard format and
interface, making them accessible to healthcare
professionals regardless of what proprietary system
created the images
• ANALOGY
o You created image using photoshop then saved
it using psd file. You cannot open the file using an
image viewer in different platforms. So, you are
going to change its format to png or jpeg.
• While PACS can be integrated to a certain machine
that is used in radiology department. It could have a
different file format. With this VNA, it doesn’t matter
what particular machine or vendor or distributor of that
instrument created because the image could still be
seen by different platforms.
HEALTH INFORMATION ECOSYSTEM
HEALTH INTEROPERABILITY ECOSYSTEM
• Defines (HIMSS, 2017) as:
o “A composition of individuals, systems and
processes that want to share, exchange, and
access all forms of health information,
including discrete, narrative and multimedia.
o Think Interoperability Ecosystem as a digital
environment. It composes also of individuals that
want to share, exchange, access all forms of
information.
o When we say discrete, these are information
represented by small numbers or letters or certain
words.
o When we say narrative, information is contained
in a paragraph. It’s from the root word “narration”
meaning “to narrate”.
o Ex. Discrete Information: Glucose 5.3 mmol/L

TELETUBBIES | BSMLS 2F 3
HIS FIRST SEMESTER
LECTURE | PROF. CHANNEY T. SALAS | PRELIMS A.Y. 2021 - 2022
OVERVIEW OF HEALTH INFORMATICS
o Ex. Narrative Information: The specimen shows • CHITS
a tan to white discoloration. 5 by 3 by 2 mm. o Community Health Information Tracking System
o When we say Multimedia, these are images. o Linux (Operating System), Apache (server),
HEALTH INFORMATICS IN THE CLOUD MySQL (database management system), PHP-
• Cloud is a server located somewhere, not in the same based system (GPL) [programming language]
geographical location of your institution. It is stored ▪ General Public License – free; don’t need to
elsewhere. pay for running the system
o When you store information in large amounts in a o An electronic medical record (EMR) developed
given area, in a given server, you have to protect through the collaboration of the ICT community
that server at all cost especially if it is a hospital (NTHC) and health workers
because all of the electronic medical records are ▪ Developed by UP Telehealth Center
there. o Primarily designed for use in the Philippine
o For redundancy purposes, it is good to have health centers in disadvantaged areas.
redundancy in any given system. Because • Issues that hamper progress of health informatics:
whatever happens to that server, you still have o Lack of interest
that information stored elsewhere and that is the o Seen more as a novelty rather than a profession
purpose of cloud technology. ▪ It is something that should be implemented
o When you have a cloud technology installed in o Lack of priority
your hospital, whatever happens to the servers o Benefits are not apparent to decision-makers
inside that hospital, you can still retrieve those o Large initial expenditure
information from cloud services.
• ADVANTAGES
o Integrated and Efficient Patient Care
▪ You don’t have any fears when it comes to
data loss.
▪ Cloud technology also offers single access
point for patient information. Anyone
authorized to have access could download
the information from a single source which
allows multiple health workers to review
results or images and notes regarding the
patient.
o Better Management of Data
▪ The accumulation of large amounts of health
records is the major problem when managing
data.
▪ In cloud technology, you will just look for the
name of the patient.
• DISADVANTAGES
o Potential Risks to Personal Information
▪ Data breeches, data loss. The information
may be subjected to theft or other violations
of privacy.
▪ To protect, we have encryption, two-way
factor authentification, and proper data
disposal.
o Cloud Setup Seems Cumbersome
HEALTH INFORMATICS IN THE PHILIPPINES
• loosely practiced since 1980s
• IBM word processors
o IBM means International Business Machines
TELETUBBIES | BSMLS 2F 4