HIMS 661 The Trends on National & International Healthcare Landscape

Read and comment on peer discussions in 100 words minimum with at least 2-3 references in APA style.

Peer 1:

There are various trends currently impacting the healthcare industry. These trends are important to consider, as they have the potential to influence many changes for healthcare professionals. Trends can bring about changes in workflow, operations, and approaches to patient care. Some of these current trends include wearable technology and artificial intelligence.

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Wearable devices have become a novelty in recent years as consumers are becoming more health-conscious and taking control of their health. These devices can be categorized under the general term – wearable technology – which is used when referring to a group of devices such as fitness trackers and smartwatches (GCF Global, n.d.). In essence, wearables can track number of steps, heart rate, and even sleep patterns to give consumers a better idea of their daily activities (GCF Global, n.d.). Wearable devices collect a tremendous amount of data which can be utilized to improve patient care (VanDenBoom, 2022). The challenge of how to use and manage that data in meaningful ways will fall on HIM professionals. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2021), implementing a science-based approach to this data can improve preventive medicine by empowering individuals to take control of their health. Therefore, HIM professionals will need to seek and implement evidence-based approaches to best utilize data from wearable devices. Since data will be transmitted from many points, they will also need to determine how to best streamline the integration of this data. Furthermore, HIM professionals will need to break-down and present the data to healthcare providers in meaningful ways so that they may proceed to incorporate it into their patient’s care.

In addition to wearable devices, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is another healthcare trend that can impact HIM professionals. AI can be used to create “enhanced versions of medical devices… such as a blue-tooth operated heart monitor” (University of Central Florida, 2022). AI devices can provide doctors more timely, accurate information. Such real-time information improves patient care by allowing healthcare providers to manage crises remotely when needed (University of Central Florida, 2022). This trend will impact HIM professionals because they will need to manage the data from AI devices and ensure that it is received by the patient’s care team. AI devices will be an additional data-point that HIM professionals will need to streamline. As more places begin to adopt AI technology, more data will be generated and need to be managed by HIM professionals.

Given the trends discussed, HIM professionals will need certain skills to respond to the changes. HIM professionals will need to be tech-savy to incorporate the use of new technology such as AI and wearable devices into healthcare. They’ll also need to become data experts, as these trends will only increase the immense amount of healthcare data that already exists. The challenges that the use of AI and wearables will present to HIM professionals will require them to be analytical and problem-solvers.

References:

Bowen, S., Khoury, M. J., & Mensah, G. A. (2021, May 7). Time to Keep a Smart Watch on Precision Health | Blogs | CDC. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://blogs.cdc.gov/genomics/2019/05/15/time-to-…

GCF Global. (n.d.). Wearables: What is Wearable Technology? GCFGlobal.Org. https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/wearables/what-is-wearable-technology/1/

University of Central Florida. (2022, April 30). 2022 Healthcare Industry Trends That Will Make a Difference. UCF Online. https://www.ucf.edu/online/healthcare/news/healthc…

Peer 2:

Discuss how the trends you identified will impact health informatics and information management (HIIM) professionals.

The United States Healthcare System has moved into the technology age in the 21^st century. Telemedicine and telehealth solutions quickly took over as a new trend at the height of the recent COVID-19 pandemic as one method for rendering care to the population. Another trend that has emerged and will be a bonus to the health informatics and information management (HIMS) for professionals is the Blockchain. Ecosystem.

Blockchain is defined according to Cerchione et al., (2022 ) as “a mechanism to manage access to EHRs stored on the cloud, by using a blockchain it can increase interoperability while maintaining privacy and security of data” Simply put a Blockchain is a digital ledger of data that continuously adds information in chronological order and transactions are maintained by a network of computers in a way that makes it difficult to hack or alter( Cerchione et al., 2022 ).

The blockchain trend will have a great impact on HIT/HIM professionals and patients going forward. For the HIM professional it will be a seamless exchange of health information across health information systems and for the patients; ownership and privacy of data are important issues that blockchain could solve. Furthermore, it is currently debated whether the health care provider or the patient owns health care data relating to a patient (although patients have a definite right to access their personal health information (Gunther et al., 2019).

What skills do you think are important for HIIM professionals to have given these trends? This technology is currently new to most, investments into creating a sufficiently user-friendly interface and educating users on how best to take advantage of it would lead to improved health outcomes. I believe this is an important skill that is needed for the HIM professional to know the infrastructure of Blockchain technology. The HIM professional must have expertise skills in decentralization, security, privacy, breach resistance, and speed of certain features of the internet’s infrastructure (Peng and Clauson, 2019).

References.

Cerchione, R., Centobelli, P, Riccio, E, Abbate, S & Oropallo, E. (2022). Blockchain’s coming to the hospital to digitalize healthcare services: Designing a distributed electronic health record ecosystem. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S016649722200027X#section-cited-by

Gunther, E, Clauson, K and Zhang J. P. (2019). Implementing Blockchains for Efficient Health Care Journal of Medical Internet Research, 21(2). DOI: 10.2196/12439. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6390185/