Public health authorities are responsible for community health care. To achieve the purpose of providing timely, equitable and efficient health care and examine the effectiveness of health care facilities available to the population of the region, the establishment initiated the health information exchange. Health information exchange (HIE) is basically the collection and distribution of health care information electronically across organizations within a region, community or hospital system.
Health information exchange (HIE) enables to electronically move clinical information among different health care information systems and also safeguard the meaning of the data being exchanged. This facility helps prompt health care to people. Public health authorities also use the data available in HIE to analyze and review the health of the population in a specific region.
This IT devoted health care enables to interact with the symptoms and provide necessary advice. Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) is a method that minimizes the delay in following up the instructions, reduces the mistakes connected to handwriting, allows the instruction to be entered at point of care, helps in pointing errors for incorrect or duplicate tests and simplifies the posting and record of charges.
CPOE is beneficial and help people in various ways.
- The divergent views of physicians are assimilated and directions issued to all concerned and involved health care support staff to evade scheduling problems, improve response time and avert any conflict with existing instructions.
- The safety aspects of a patient are taken care by the CPOE system. It allows actual time identification of the patient, recommends suitable drug dose, provides details of unfavorable drug reaction, helps check on allergies and treatment discrepancy. Accessing these information's doctors and caregivers can evaluate and accordingly take care of the patient.
- The CPOE system is user friendly and allows efficient use by unusual and new users to use the instructions and work flow.
- The information stored in the system is fully secured and can be accessed by appropriate electronic signature.
- The system helps generate statistical data and online reports that help administrators appraise patient information and make changes to improve productivity and optimum utilization of resources. Such information also helps in planning, training and scrutiny of events for patient safety.
- The system can be accessed from any locality through various communicating devices including Personal Computers and tablet computers, and it takes, handles and disseminates information for all at the spot of care.
- Earlier oral or hand written directives and prescriptions of doctors were subject to misinterpretation by the medical support staff leading to errors and injuries to patients. The CPOE system prevents such prescribing errors and improves the security and effectivenessof medication.
Thus, the HIE and CPOE systems have done a world of good to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the health care structure and scheme in the community and region.