If you are in an accident and unable to explain your health history, wouldn’t you want healthcare providers to be able to quickly pull your information up? If you were in an area that was affected by a disaster, wouldn’t it be convenient if all of your health information were stored electronically? There are many instances where a Health Information Exchange (HIE) is necessary. In this blog we will discuss the importance of HIE and the types of jobs available in Health IT.
HIE has transformed the way nurses, doctors, emergency professionals, and pharmacists communicate and share private medical information. There are no longer unnecessary hoops to jump through to obtain paper charts and medical histories, especially during emergencies. In addition, the health information exchange allows for medical information to be shared faster. With access to current medical information, health professionals are able to limit the risk of prescribing potentially harmful medications or performing unnecessary tests to their patients. You may be wondering how secure this system is, as sharing personal information related to one’s health is very private information. Standardized policies have been placed to ensure all systems have top privacy and security for the exchange. Access to data and use of data is always monitored as health care safety continues to be improved.
All medical specialists are knowledgeable of the patient’s up-to-date status at all times through directed-exchange, query-based exchange, and consumer-mediated exchange. Through directed-exchange, medical professionals are able to submit patient updates securely through the Internet to one another. Of course, these professionals already know and trust each other. This is helpful for quick updates on lab results and medical tests. If a patient is sent to the emergency room, query-based exchange enables the EMT to research every detail of the patient’s previous history to ensure proper care. In consumer-mediated exchange, patients are able to access their own health information and send updates accordingly.
So, how is a HIE maintained? There are many different technology vendors that offer HIE platform systems to health institutions. The ability to provide business intelligence tools is a crucial feature of HIEs. HIEs must integrate well into a hospital system, gather, store and sort data and provide sufficient data analytics. Without the brains behind the technology, physicians would be unable to obtain necessary patient information.
In this post, the theme for health IT jobs is security. The wealth of medical information within HIE is mind-blowing. If you’re interested in starting a career path in HIE, there are many options for you as HIE becomes more and more mainstream. Employers are looking for skills such as IT implementation, lab interoperability, configuration and testing, quality reporting, IT strategy, and analysis of complex data sets (to name a few).
We’re happy to be a part of your job search within IT health! Please visit our jobs page for current opportunities.