Healthcare Information Management System Coursework

Healthcare Information Management System - Coursework Example Next force is the need to measure correctly the performance of health care providers and practitioners with the use of IT (Brailer and Terasawa, 2003). Other forces such as visions by stakeholders on how IT can transform health care while reducing the cost at the same time. These factors have led to a paradigm shift from traditional record keeping systems to a transformed IT centered system. It can be leveraged in various sectors of health care especially in patient data record keeping. Other areas include patient relationship management and use of Electronic laboratories, Tele-consultation and Electronic prescription. This way IT can be used to improve of efficiency in health care. 2. Strategies for achieving interoperability of health care applications Interoperability refers to the ability of various applications used to communicate and transfer information in healthcare management. The main communication channel is between health information systems and the software applications. Strategies should be developed so as to ensure efficient and timely data transmission between health care applications. Also, strategies should be made in order to replace old and incompatible equipment with modern ones and active personnel training on the use of interoperability equipment. Healthcare institutions should also ensure that there is proper coordination and cooperation between the various departments (Brailer and Terasawa, 2003). Strategies must also be made to institutionalize healthcare systems, which assist in planning among data transmitting departments while encouraging growth of flexible architectural interoperability structures. The management in healthcare facilities must also fund actively the projects set up to ensure and give solutions to interoperability. 3. Core competencies for IT departments that support health care organizations. Competencies are characteristics of something that make it standout and help achieve set goals and objectives. For a competen ce to be considered core, it must have a wide breadth of application and be highly relevant to the end user, as well as maintain distinction and difficult to imitate. For the health care sector, IT has five core competences that make it suitable for adoption. One is that IT departments help in business analysis. When data is fed into IT applications, they can process it for success of expected results such as analysis of patient recovery rates. The second core competence for IT department is Innovation. Innovation will come in handy in healthcare departments due to the rapid changes in technology. The third is knowledge management, which can be used to improve the knowledge work systems in other health departments. Fourth competence for IT department in health care is solution web management. This is the ability of IT to provide web based solutions to heath care problems (Brailer and Terasawa, 2003). Such include online prescription and consultation. Lastly, IT departments help in c hange management, especially where new projects are being implemented. This is necessary in health care as in order to ensure efficiency in service delivery, new systems and equipments are being introduced. 4. The benefits of leveraging information technology, such as the EMR, in health care. One of the main benefits of introducing IT is the reduction of costs in health care. This is achieved through reduced costs of regular book keeping with the shift from