Why Should Your Medical Business Adopt Health Information Exchange for Seamless Medical Service Delivery?

Highlights:

• Introduction    
• Advantages of health information exchange
• Key components of healthcare information exchange
• Recent trends and advancements in healthcare information exchange

The prominent characteristic of this century has been the incorporation of digital technologies into the healthcare sector. Today, almost all medical services, including those related to diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of the patient, involve digitization. The basic philosophy behind the use of digital technologies is to make medical services accessible to all and improve the efficiency of these services. Health information exchange is one such outcome of this collaboration between the IT industry and the medical sector.

Health information exchange can be defined as the electronic mobilization of patients’ healthcare data across different medical and healthcare institutions within a specific region or province. The fundamental aim of healthcare information exchange is to establish an electronic channel that allows different medical sector entities such as doctors, physicians, pharmacists, nurses, etc., to securely access a patient’s medical records.

Why is healthcare information exchange important for seamless delivery of medical services?

A major problem in today’s healthcare sector is that patients’ data and medical records are fragmented. The absence of a standardized digital system for storing medical records results in limited communication and coordination among hospitals and clinics within a specified region. Whenever a patient sees a new doctor or physician, they are required to provide their medical records, as the new healthcare provider typically has limited knowledge of their prior medications and treatment history. The lack of interoperability between healthcare institutions makes it difficult to understand the true nature of the patient’s health issue. Clinical data sharing addresses this issue of lack of interoperability by using healthcare information technology. Ultimately, this helps in reducing the errors associated with medical service delivery.

Secondly, healthcare information exchange improves the efficiency of healthcare services as the need for paperwork is reduced. Also, since patient information storage is centralized, the need to store patient data separately by each medical practitioner is done away with. Apart from preventing paperwork duplicity, this information exchange system also prevents duplicity of medical testing as the laboratory results of the patient’s medical tests are made available to all the hospitals and clinics in that region. This brings down the cost of medical services drastically, thereby helping patients cut down their expenses on healthcare.

What are the key components of health information exchange?

By adopting a holistic approach to patient care, healthcare information exchange helps in reducing patient readmissions and medication errors. Furthermore, these systems try to keep a check on duplicate testing, thereby improving patient diagnoses and enhancing healthcare outcomes. For this, these exchange systems rely on three components:

Directed exchange

Directed exchange is a component of healthcare information exchange that allows healthcare providers to send patient information such as medical records, patient history, and medication summaries to other medical institutions. The data thus sent is encrypted so that it remains secure, and the patient’s confidentiality remains intact. The healthcare institution or entity that is at the receiving end can refer to this information while diagnosing and treating that specific patient.

Query-based exchange

Query-based exchange is an important component of healthcare information systems that helps medical practitioners deal with emergencies. For instance, while performing a medical operation, surgeons can take the aid of query-based exchange to communicate with other doctors and ask for the medical records or treatment history of that specific patient. This component, thus, plays a decisive role in deciding the outcome of the surgery and helps avoid erroneous treatment procedures.

Consumer-mediated exchange

This component is different from the other two exchange approaches in that it allows patients to access their medical information and report inaccuracies in it. Thus, this component enables patients to take part in the clinical data-sharing process and suggest amendments to the information stored in the system. Apart from correcting their medical information, this information exchange system also allows patients to monitor their health and decide the entities with whom they want to share their medical information.

Trends in healthcare information exchange systems that your business should be aware of

The emergence of innovative technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data analytics is predicted to revolutionize the entire healthcare architecture including the health information exchange industry. These technologies can enable medical practitioners to identify patterns and predict patient treatment needs, thus enabling them to offer medical services proactively. An interesting trend that is being witnessed in the medical sector is the growing adoption of telehealth and virtual care services. The delivery of these new-age medical services can be enhanced by using information exchange systems as it will enable the collaboration of remote medical service providers.

According to some experts, healthcare information exchange systems will help the medical community in public health research and assessing societal health on the whole. Information exchange systems can help doctors monitor disease trends, thereby helping them predict epidemics and pandemics in advance. These disease trends, if shared with governmental authorities, can aid in effective policymaking and reduce the impact of pandemics.

To sum it up, by establishing a robust communication and data-sharing channel, health information exchange systems play a huge role in ensuring the seamless delivery of medical services. The three key components of healthcare information exchange systems viz., directed exchange, query-based exchange, and consumer-mediated exchange, enable medical practitioners to offer efficient, quality, and comprehensive medical services. Furthermore, the adoption of AI, ML, and data analytics in the healthcare sector will further augment the capabilities of healthcare information exchange systems in the coming period.

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