Public Health Essay: Health Information Exchange

Historically, most medical information was stockpiled on papers which were put in filing cabinets, folders, or boxes. However, in the recent years, there has been tremendous changes in storing information in healthcare centers. The healthcare services have been digitalized to allow an increase in portability and accessibility of health information. The Health Information Exchange has been one of the changes that have been made in the healthcare system.

In a nutshell, the purpose of the Health Information Exchange (HIE) is to enable parties involved to share information electronically than using the old way paper fax. The health information exchange electronically is genuinely improving the efficiency and quality of the healthcare by giving a chance to the healthcare providers to access and also share the medical information of a patient through the computer to other healthcare delivery systems and communities. HIE also ensures that the records of the patients are complete since the past test results and medical history are usually reviewed every time the patients visits the health provider. The physicians and patients can make informed healthcare decisions with the help of HIE to share crucial information pertaining the patients. Sharing of data with the help of HIE aids in preventing mistakes like wrong diagnosis, duplicate testing, and medication errors.

Many opportunities can be demonstrated with the advancement of the Health Information Exchange of the healthcare organizations. With the improvements in the Health Information Exchange (HIE), the researchers and the leaders have gotten an opportunity to unleash the prevailing Electronic Medical Record and build on it. The researchers have had a chance to discover the use of cloud technology in the healthcare centers. The cloud technology is a form of self-service network that enables access thus enabling the delivery of computing services. With the cloud technology, many opportunities have been derived for instance the Big Data Analytics and easy access to the Human Resource data. All these building blocks have been applied in many places to demonstrate the opportunities and a change in ways the patients are handled.

The opportunities brought about with the advancement of these organizations can cross geographic regions and enhance the care delivery process. This is because the Health Information Exchange is not only done within a healthcare center but also involves the community and other healthcare centers. The community equally can access information from a healthcare because they work in connection with a common goal of improving health delivery services. There since technological ideas can be shared, then the opportunities brought by the technology equally can be shared. Other health care centers or communities too can adopt the cloud technology to enable them to offer advanced care to patients. For instance, a care provider can electronically send directly care summaries that include the lab results, problems, and medications when they want to refer their patients. In doing this, the exchange of information is well coordinated, and duplicate tests or medication errors are avoided.

Indeed, the future holds a promising relationship of patients and physicians. This is because the caregivers make use of Health Information Exchange to give advanced care to patients by improving the trust from patients when retrieving very vital information be in the hospital or any other one. The speed, quality, cost, and security of medical information using the Health Information Exchange has been improved over time. The Health Information Exchange has truly over time improved the efficiency of care by making sure care providers be in other healthcare centers or community have access to same information.