Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration, or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health professionals and allied health fields. Medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, midwifery, nursing, optometry, audiology, psychology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, athletic training, and other health professions are all part of health care. It includes work done in providing primary care, secondary care, and tertiary care, as well as in public health.
Health informatics is the field of science and engineering that aims at developing methods and technologies for the acquisition, processing, and study of patient data, which can come from different sources and modalities, such as electronic health records, diagnostic test results, medical scans. The health domain provides an extremely wide variety of problems that can be tackled using computational techniques.
An electronic health record (EHR) is the systematized collection of patient and population electronically stored health information in a digital format. These records can be shared across different health care settings. Records are shared through network-connected, enterprise-wide information systems or other information networks and exchanges. EHRs may include a range of data, including demographics, medical history, medication and allergies, immunization status, laboratory test results, radiology images, vital signs, personal statistics like age and weight, and billing information.
Health information exchange (HIE) is the mobilization of health care information electronically across organizations within a region, a community or a hospital system. Participants, in data exchange, are called in the aggregate Health Information Networks (HIN). In practice the term (HIE), it also refers to the health information organization (HIO) that facilitates the exchange.
A Regional Health Information Organization, also called a Health Information Exchange Organization, is a multistakeholder organization created to facilitate a health information exchange (HIE) – the transfer of healthcare information electronically across organizations – among stakeholders of that region's healthcare system. The ultimate objective is to improve the safety, quality, and efficiency of healthcare as well as access to healthcare through the efficient application of health information technology. RHIOs are also intended to support secondary use of clinical data for research as well as institution/provider quality assessment and improvement. RHIO stakeholders include smaller clinics, hospitals, medical societies, major employers and payers.
The eHealth Exchange, formerly known as the Nationwide Health Information Network, is an initiative for the exchange of healthcare information. It was developed under the auspices of the U.S. Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), and now managed by a non-profit industry coalition called Sequoia Project. The exchange is a web-services based series of specifications designed to securely exchange healthcare related data. The NwHIN is related to the Direct Project which uses a secure email-based approach. One of the latest goals is to increase the amount of onboarding information about the NwHIN to prospective vendors of health care systems.
In 2004, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality of the United States Department of Health and Human Services created the AHRQ National Resource Center for Health Information Technology to support over 125 federal grants and contracts that are demonstrating the value and implementation of information technology in health care.
The medical home, also known as the patient-centered medical home (PCMH), is a team-based health care delivery model led by a health care provider to provide comprehensive and continuous medical care to patients with a goal to obtain maximal health outcomes. It is described in the "Joint Principles" as "an approach to providing comprehensive primary care for children, youth and adults."
Connected health is a socio-technical model for healthcare management and delivery by using technology to provide healthcare services remotely. Connected health, also known as technology enabled care (TEC) aims to maximize healthcare resources and provide increased, flexible opportunities for consumers to engage with clinicians and better self-manage their care. It uses readily available consumer technologies to deliver patient care outside of the hospital or doctor's office. Connected health encompasses programs in telehealth, remote care and disease and lifestyle management, often leverages existing technologies such as connected devices using cellular networks and is associated with efforts to improve chronic care. However, there is an increasing blur between software capabilities and healthcare needs whereby technologists are now providing the solutions to support consumer wellness and provide the connectivity between patient data, information and decisions. This calls for new techniques to guide Connected Health solutions such as "design thinking" to support software developers in clearly identifying healthcare requirements, and extend and enrich traditional software requirements gathering techniques.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is a staff division of the Office of the Secretary, within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ONC leads national health IT efforts, charged as the principal federal entity to coordinate nationwide efforts to implement and use the most advanced health information technology and the electronic exchange of health information.
Patient participation is a trend that arose in answer to medical paternalism. However, only rarely can unchecked physician paternalism be justified, and unlimited patient autonomy would presumably be equally abhorrent. Informed consent is a process where patients make decisions informed by the advice of medical professionals.
The Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients (CRISP) is a nonprofit organization created to function as Maryland's state-designated health information exchange (HIE), by the Maryland Health Care Commission. CRISP currently serves as the HIE for Maryland and the District of Columbia. CRISP is advised by a wide range of stakeholders who are responsible for healthcare throughout the region.
The Omaha System is a standardized health care terminology consisting of an assessment component, a care plan/services component, and an evaluation component. Approximately 22,000 health care practitioners, educators, and researchers use Omaha System to improve clinical practice, structure documentation, and analyze secondary data. Omaha System users from Canada, China, The Czech Republic, Estonia, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Turkey, the United States, and Wales, have presented at Omaha System International Conferences.
Informatics Corporation of America (ICA) is a privately held health information technology organization headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. It serves integrated delivery systems (IDNs), health information exchanges (HIEs), individual hospitals, Independent Practice Associations (IPAs) and Regional Health Information Systems (RHIOs). In 2000, some of Vanderbilt University Medical Center's (VUMC) practicing physicians teamed up with informatics professionals to develop two complementary software applications—dubbed StarChart and StarPanel—to aggregate and organize medical data, and to improve communication and clinical decision-making within a single interface. This technology has allowed VUMC to improve efficiency and communication processes in order to deliver cohesive care across the medical center and its affiliated clinics and physicians' practices.
The Clinical Care Classification (CCC) System is a standardized, coded nursing terminology that identifies the discrete elements of nursing practice. The CCC provides a unique framework and coding structure. Used for documenting the plan of care; following the nursing process in all health care settings.
Medical image sharing is the electronic exchange of medical images between hospitals, physicians and patients. Rather than using traditional media, such as a CD or DVD, and either shipping it out or having patients carry it with them, technology now allows for the sharing of these images using the cloud. The primary format for images is DICOM. Typically, non-image data such as reports may be attached in standard formats like PDF during the sending process. Additionally, there are standards in the industry, such as IHE Cross Enterprise Document Sharing for Imaging (XDS-I), for managing the sharing of documents between healthcare enterprises. A typical architecture involved in setup is a locally installed server, which sits behind the firewall, allowing secure transmissions with outside facilities. In 2009, the Radiological Society of North America launched the "Image Share" project, with the goal of giving patients control of their imaging histories by allowing them to manage these records as they would online banking or shopping.
Health care quality is a level of value provided by any health care resource, as determined by some measurement. As with quality in other fields, it is an assessment of whether something is good enough and whether it is suitable for its purpose. The goal of health care is to provide medical resources of high quality to all who need them; that is, to ensure good quality of life, cure illnesses when possible, to extend life expectancy, and so on. Researchers use a variety of quality measures to attempt to determine health care quality, including counts of a therapy's reduction or lessening of diseases identified by medical diagnosis, a decrease in the number of risk factors which people have following preventive care, or a survey of health indicators in a population who are accessing certain kinds of care.
Health care analytics is the health care analysis activities that can be undertaken as a result of data collected from four areas within healthcare; claims and cost data, pharmaceutical and research and development (R&D) data, clinical data, and patient behavior and sentiment data (patient behaviors and preferences,. Health care analytics is a growing industry in the United States, expected to grow to more than $31 billion by 2022. The industry focuses on the areas of clinical analysis, financial analysis, supply chain analysis, as well as marketing, fraud and HR analysis.
HealthShare Exchange (HSX) is a membership-dues-supported nonprofit health information exchange formed in 2009 and incorporated in 2012 by Greater Philadelphia’s hospitals, health systems, and healthcare insurers.[1][2] It links the electronic medical record (EMR) systems of different hospital health systems and other healthcare providers — and the claims data of healthcare insurers — to make this information accessible at inpatient and outpatient points of care and for care management. HSX services provide recent clinical care information, and alert providers and health plans to care events.[2] Health information exchange makes patient care more informed and coordinated, and reduces unnecessary care and readmissions. HSX serves the greater Delaware Valley region, including southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey.[2]
HIE of One is a free software project developing tools for patients to manage their own health records. HIE stands for Health Information Exchange, an electronic network for sharing health information across different organizations, hospitals, providers, and patients. This is one of a growing number of tools for encrypted data exchange within the health care sphere.
