Health Informatics Responses
Peer Response Instructions
After making your initial post, substantially respond to at least two other student posts in a way that prompts further input or provides another viewpoint. Describe a situation from your professional experience that backs up your viewpoint and discuss the social, moral, political and economic factors impacting your position.
Provide rationale for your response with at least one scholarly source using an APA in-text citation and full reference.
Health Informatics Responses
Peer discussion #1
James Loughran
I would define informatics as the use and study of information and technology to improve healthcare quality, safety, and cost. We use technology in our day-to-day work environment in many ways. From the use of electronic health records, electronic medication records, and everything in between, it is all around us. For this discussion, I have asked two nurses that I work with, Stephanie, and Courtney, what informatics means to them. Stephanie replied stating that informatics is the use of data and technology to improve the healthcare system. Courtney stated that informatics is the study and gathering of data that is used with technology to help staff provide better care to patients. According to the textbook, Informatics is the science and art of turning data into information. The author elaborates further by stating the American Medical Informatics Associations’ definition, that informatics is an interdisciplinary field that draws from and contributes to computer science, decision science information science, management science, cognitive science, and organizational science (Hebda et al., 2019). Informatics has a broad scope but ultimately the goal of utilizing health information technology is to streamline processes, improve the quality of care, reduce mortality, cut costs, and collect data to support learning. (Institute of Medicine, 2013)
As I compare my previous thoughts of informatics and those of my colleagues, I realize while we were correct in some respects, we did not consider how broad of a field informatics truly is. Ultimately, our definitions aligned well with text because we all believed informatics draws upon data and turns it into information that we can use to improve processes. However, our definitions differed from the texts because we did not state how broad informatics truly is.
Hebda, T., Hunter, K., & Czar, P. (2019). In Handbook of Informatics for Nurses and healthcare professionals (pp. 2–3). essay, Pearson.
Institute of Medicine. (IOM). (2013a). Core measurement needs for better care, better health, and lower costs: Counting what counts: Workshop summary by Claudia Grossman, Brian Powers, Julia Sanders. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press © 2013
Peer discussion #2
Jessica Tellechea
The way I would define the term informatics as it relates to healthcare is being able to use technology to help care for and improve patient outcomes. It’s collecting patient specific data to help healthcare professionals diagnose and treat patients properly. I asked two colleagues what the term healthcare informatics means to them. Colleague #1 stated “healthcare informatics means utilizing and improving computer charting systems for patient care.” Colleague #2 stated “healthcare informatics is feedback we derive through technological means.” The term informatics as it relates to healthcare is a combination of computer science, information science and nursing science designed to assist in the management and processing of nursing data, information and knowledge to support the practice of nursing and the delivery of nursing care (Corcoran 1986). Colleague #1 had a similar comparison to the meaning in the sense that they mentioned the use of computer charting systems to improve patient care. On the contrary, colleague #1 didn’t mention collecting data and patient information to support the nursing care given to patients. Colleague #2 had a better definition of what nursing informatics meant. They incorporated feedback given by using technology. However, there was no mention about collecting and analyzing this feedback/data. To conclude, I learned that nursing informatics is a collaboration of patient data through computer charting systems to better patient care in the hospital settings.
Reference
Corcoran, S.M. (1986). Planning by expert and novice nurses in cases of varying complexity. Research in Nursing and Health, 9, 155-162.
