The Important Role of Technology in Patient Safety
March 3, 2022Technology has become a crucial part of the medical
industry. The right technology can aid in increased efficiency, enhanced quality, and reduced budget. Some of the many perks of technology include the facilitation of communication between clinical workers, improving patients safety, reducing potential medical errors, increasing access to medical information, and encouraging patient-centric care.Healthcare management has become more convenient due to technological advancements. This innovative technology makes the hospital management software more seamless and user-friendly. The impact or role of health information technology on patient safety and care is as varied as the systems and devices now in use.
Technology Helps In Serving Patients Better
The effect of information technology has expanded beyond information visibility and sharing to utilizing information for data-informed patient care. Advanced data analytics are soaring in increasing the patient care experience.
With a plethora of technology available, a formal approach is required in how healthcare leaders and health IT professionals implement the technology that works the best in their specific solution. Clinical
workers, technology personnel, and IT professionals can work in coordination to achieve the best possible health management software that suits their needs and their patients’ needs.How is Technology Improving the Patient Care Experience or Patient Safety?
Facilitates and enhances communication between clinicians:
Often in a patient’s medical journey, numerous healthcare officials are involved in their
care. This can drastically increase the potential for miscommunication or human or medical error. Communication errors are the most common factors that influence the occurrence of adverse events.EHRs are curated to help reduce those errors by compiling and maintaining all of the patients’ health-related data into one easily accessible anecdote.
Administrators, clinical workers, and IT professionals must join forces together to analyze areas where technology will benefit their specific operation, then set goals for what they want to get done with that technology.
Reduces Medical Error:
Prescribing errors are another common medical error that can have immensely serious complications and side effects. Electronic prescribing methods can help reduce prescription errors by allowing clinicians to send prescriptions electronically to the pharmacy directly and build efficient hospital management software.
Medical alerts, clinical flags, and reminders are also some of the ways in which technology playing a role to reduce medication errors and improve the patient care experience.
Mistakes in prescribing drugs are a medical error with potentially hazardous after-effects. Electronic prescribing helps mitigate risks in this domain. These healthcare management systems reduce the potential for medication errors by eliminating handwritten scripts.
Incorporates Digital Medical Records:
Chronicling the records of the patients electronically can enhance efficiency drastically. Health workers must understand how to input patient information in the hospital management software.
Information such as the medical records of the patient, clinical history, medication records can be stored in the hospital software. The billing department can also make use of this technology to record and submit insurance claims. Digital medical records result in better, more efficient care for patients.
Gives easy access to Information:
IT professionals strive to share patient information over different systems. This is known as interoperability in healthcare. As digital healthcare management systems improve in this domain, it allows clinical workers to share patient information, reducing the risk of errors in treating a patient.
A doctor at a hospital can get access to a patient’s records with their personal
physician. It can prove beneficial for patients having chronic illnesses. If they want to change doctors or take valuable second opinions for other specialists, their medical histories can be transferred to the preferred doctors.This way, the chances of getting lost in translation will be reduced substantially and the doctor will be easily able to understand the medical history of the patient without getting anything wrong.
Laymen are not capable of conveying medical diagnoses in precise scientific terms. This creates room for error and confusion. Interoperability can be a great way to eliminate such risks.
Improves Public Health:
Boosting public health revolves around creating preventive programs that help people stay healthy for a longer time. Identifying chronic health issues within specific population demographics are also some of the primary objectives of enhancing public health.
Public health informatics make use of data from numerous sources including hospitals, surveys, social drives, and so on to help healthcare managementteams and government agencies address and prepare for new health threats.
Supports Clinical Decision:
This is one of the most crucial areas where technology can work wonders in improving the patient care experience. Clinical decision support involves making use of technology to fetch all the relevant information about a patient, as well as codified standards about potential treatments, into a clinical worker’s hands in real-time.
This is a great way to diagnose complication afflictions. Sometimes, an ailment is difficult to diagnose and the trial and error method is used on the patient to see how the patient responds to various treatments.
This can be threatening to the health of the patient. Clinical decision support is an extremely efficient way to eliminate any such practice.
Clinical data analysis can easily make diagnoses and help the patient get the right medical support. This will eliminate the possibility of the wrong treatment being detrimental to the patient’s health.
Enhances Patient-Centric Care:
Encouraging patients to be more involved in their care is of utmost importance for a number of reasons. This increases compliance and patient satisfaction.
Technology immensely helps contribute to patient-centric care by fostering communication between health service providers and patients through online portals, messaging services, and emails.
It also enhances access to information such as medical records, which can improve self-monitoring and patient convenience. IT can have a drastic impact on patient safety.
As with most technology, there may be benefits and potential concerns. With any incorporation or use of healthcare technology, it is critical that patient safety and quality always remain the primary focus.
Conclusion
Technology has taken the medical domain by storm, and for all the right reasons. It is taking healthcare management and the patient care experience a notch higher. We encourage all health workers to adapt technology and provide a seamless experience to the patients.