Next in my professional wish list is for Malaysian Govt to embark on an integrated computerized medical record management or patient information management system among medical institution. As a pharmacist it would benefit us in our due course monitoring the adverse drug reaction, part of pharmacovigilance portfolio
It is no doubt that health information management is essential for today's patients and health care providers. Without an adequate form of compiling information on any given patient that follows his care from the moment of initial contact with a physician, confusion, misdiagnosis or even conflict of treatment plans would occur. Understanding the benefits of health information technology will help individuals to understand why private information is complied, how it is used in their health care and how technology will ultimately advance patient care and treatment in the future.
Why do it computerized and integrated?
Medical record serves two goals: I should accurately reflect the course of the disease and or indicate the possible causes of the disease. The medical record is used as a tool to assist doctors in the care of patients. Today, the medical record serves a comprehensive purpose: “to recall observation, to inform others, to monitor recovery performance, and to justify intervention”. However it is also open for debate that paper based records can not adequately support the task of providing patient care in an efficient manner. Moreover, the overload of general and patient specific information from many resources, seen in bulging files of patients with chronic disease, intensifies the physical and conceptual problems of maintaining paper based patient records. In my past experiences practicing my pupil pharmacist in General Hospital, delayed decision are made due to the longer time consumed reading through the patient information record and hence putting patient at risk if decision made deviated from the actual medical conditions due to various individual approaches.
Healthcare Business Intelligence believe that the electronic patient record will significantly change the healthcare approaches in total, rather than merely replacing the paper-based record. This change allows data to be used for a wide variety of purposes ranging from direct patient care, decision support, quality assurance, scientific research, and management of health care facilities.
With the integrated and computerized medical record management among hospitals, simultaneous access from multiple locations within the health care facility or hospitals. This facilitate mobile consulting, patient transfer and refer cases. It also facilitates quick medical history evaluation for immediate attention upon any emergency cases.
Computerized records are more legible because it is recorded as printed text rather than as hand writing, and it is better organized and structured. With the current computer technology, data can be displayed in many different formats e.g. laboratory data can be displayed as numerical figures or graphical representation against time (flow sheets). This usually results in collection of more reliable and more complete data for more accurate judgment and profiling. This indirectly supports both decisions related to the diagnosis of a disease on the basis of individual data, and decision related to the therapy on the basis of the available data evidence.
Basically, nearly instant and precise access to information is another one of the greatest benefits to provide effective medical attention. Extended access to pharmacist will enable us to evaluate and monitor pharmacovigilance of drugs consumed by patient more effectively. Moving forward as a IT-literate society, the medical access should be extended to the patients for them to actively participate in improving their medical or health profile. I would be more happier to have self-access to my medical profile in order for me to change my lifestyle as we all know that prevention is better than cure
0 comments:
Post a Comment