Term Paper Outline

Many countries invest a lot of money in the health sector with the expectation of quality health services but on the contrary, the situation remains worse. This paper is going to evaluate the use of health information technologyto improve health care decision making in the health sector. The quality of health care services mainly depend on the quality, accuracy and integrity of the health information available. In order to transform the health sector of any state in the world, there is need to adopt health information technology, for example the electronic theelectronic record systems. This will enable efficiency in health care delivery. Also important is the medical decision support system that is a means of improving the health care quality, through the integration of data and knowledge management systems. Many at times the health information technology has failed to achieve the expected benefits of cost saving due to the erroneous systems that are wrongly designed or wrongly implemented. The HER related errors are as a result of human error, where by data is incorrectly keyed or data is lost due to negligence and hence compromising the integrity of the information.

The medical decision support systems result into errors mainly because of the software flaws. It all results due to the system performance issues, inadequate support rules or guidelines, misuse of the software by the developer, human error due to insufficient training and system interruptions by the employees. The decision support system may lead to errors of omission since there is no prompt to show the wrong information. The system commands what is supposed to be done, technically this is referred to as auto bias. The health professionals should always make decisions on whether to use the decisions of the system or to override them, since one will be held accountable if something went wrong. The medical environment can cause tension at times and this can lead to data entry errors.

To conclude a medical decision support system of high quality standards can also misguide or give wrong decisions. These systems are not recommended for every health facility or any medical scenario since they are erroneous and they need a lot of scrutiny before they are commanded to give a decision.

References

 Brailer, D. 2004. The decade of health information technology. HHS Report, July, 21

Chaudhry, B. Wang, J., & Wu, S. et al., 2006. Systematic review: Impact of health information technology on quality, efficiency, and costs of medical care, Annals of Internal Medicine, 144(10), 742–752.