Health Information Technology

Health Information Technology (HIT) primarily refers to a range of products and services for the management of a patient's medical information. It also helps the concerned doctors to access or exchange that information with each other and also with the patients in order to provide better medication and cure. In the coming years, health information technology will surely play a key role in transforming the picture of health care system.

Health information technology has the potential to make health care system safer, more effective and more efficient. Its application on macro level will be very useful for saving money in the long run, as well as making health care more responsive to the people's needs. Health care information technology has great potential to revolutionize health care sector and improve the treatment of a patient by centralizing his medical records for authorized usage.

Benefits of Health Information Technology
As health information technology would be a national database system for the patient's information and health records, it will be easily accessible to all the health care centers. Suppose a person living in California, goes on a vacation to Florida and meets with an accident or a local disease there, his medical records can be transferred easily and effectively, and thus rapid treatment can be provided accordingly. Thus, the doctor in Florida would be having complete access to his treatment history and would not prescribe a drug that would react unfavorably to that prescribed earlier. With a paper based record maintenance system, the quick transfer of patient's information will almost be next to impossible. Besides this, following are a few more benefits of health information technology.

• Improved health care quality and safety of the patient.
• Reduced paperwork and easier access to information.
• Reduced cost of treatment in the long run, both for patients and health care providers. A recent study by the Rand Institute estimates that if 90% of all health care providers adopt this technology, potential savings could average over $77 billion per year.
• Information of patient's health insurance policies can also be stored and retrieved from health records (stored in the database).

Drawbacks of Health Information Technology
Besides these benefits, there are a few drawbacks which might make the picture look a bit darker. These drawbacks are as follows:

• The cost of treatment is decreased in the long run, however, the up-front cost for the implementation of the whole system will go very high.
• Medical professionals would have to undergo training processes and alter some of their current practices in order to accommodate the new system.
• The medical records of a patient may become more vulnerable to hacking.

The idea of health information technology appeals to be a promising one, as the potential benefits outweigh the possible drawbacks. Components of this technology such as Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE), bar-code scanners for administration and computerized decision support systems, can surely help to limit the errors and give the best possible treatment to the patients.