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Mission & Goals: |
Groom
Skills,
Gather Evidence and
Generate Knowledge for people's health.
To Improve
the
Efficacy,
Quality & Equity
of Health Systems. |
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Health Informatics |
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Introduction |
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Health informatics is an
evolving scientific discipline that deals with the collection, storage, retrieval,
communication and optimal use of health related data, information and knowledge. The
discipline utilises the methods and technologies of the information sciences for the
purposes of problem solving and decision-making thus assuring quality healthcare in all
basic and applied areas of biomedical sciences.Health informatics is concerned primarily
with the processing of data, information and knowledge in all aspects of healthcare.
Health informatics aims to study the principles and provide solutions. The domains of
Health informatics are research, academia, operations and commercial and is delivered by
operational health practitioners, managers, academics, researchers, educators, scientists
and technologists. |
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Use of
Health Informatics |
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Computers in Health Care
are well accepted the world over as clinical and diagnostic aids, to improve patient care,
tone up administration, facilitate accounting and enable effective management control. An
important application has been in hospital management, where computers have been an
effective tool for doctors, nursing, administration and management. |
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The major uses of Health
Informatics in Health System Management are |
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Informatics application in Hospital
Management: |
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In all over the world the
health problems and needs are increasing and becoming more complex. The demands and
pressures on the hospitals and health care institutions are also increasing. At the
same time the resources are becoming increasingly limited. Achievement of goals,
efficiently, effiectively, and economically is the prmary responsibility of all the
administrators. This can be achieved through business,medical and technical management
systems in hospitals. |
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Top |
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Decision making-Decision support system in
health care: |
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There is a growing trend to
apply computers for tasks other than tabulation. The health care providers are
inceresingly interested in the feasibility of applying the "expert system
technology" to assist in improved health care delivery. The earliest research
contribtions in the area of artificial intelligence was a program to simulate expert
behaviour in the selection of an antibiotic for an infection. The trend of research in
Medical Informatics is increasingly in the area called expert systems/decision support
systems. |
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Informatics application in health system
management: |
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The deployment and
development of health services has been less influenced by the collection of specific data
than by what has been referred to as "Impressionistic Planning" a process
wherein information may be minimal and the basis for decision making is intuitive and
political, the end results being determined by past experience, popular pressures and
rough estimates and guess work. Health professionals tended to cooperate more readily and
communicate more freely working and a local level and this promoted the free exchange of
health activities and information. At the central level the need to coordinate and control
health service development was government largely by the constraints of the resources
available. The emphasis, until recent years has been that if there were enough staff,
facilities, equipment and finance, the public health and health care services could be
expanded and the health status of the population would automatically be improved. In the
early 1960s, it became apparent to most health administrators that health expenditure was
not infinite and that the emphasis in planning and development must focus on the more
effective and efficient use of the limited resources available. When the time came to
transmit priorities and proposed programmes into actual operation it soon became evident
that there was a serious deficit in relevant information. The major areas in which health
service data was lacking or not readily available were health workforce development
programming, and the evaluation of service effectiveness and efficiency. Heath managers
found they urgently required this information to enable them to initiate and control the
progress and outcomes of the programme operation. The establishment of health information
unit enable the health organisation to have a single focus for the coordination and
collation of any forms and sources of data available within the health systems. |
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Updated on 20/10/2001
by John Paul Chakalackal |
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