The age of rapid technological development forces all industries and professions to adjust to the new conditions and integrate new approaches to their work. Indeed, health information technology (HIT) systems are adopted in most clinics, and nurses interact with them to optimize patient care and daily repeatable operations (Rahimi & Vimarlund, 2007). It is essential to evaluate the effectiveness of HIT for healthcare and the approaches distinguished from the standard systems’ assessment.
Nursing professionals must have the basic informatics skills to interact with modern HIT, and knowledge about the most workable methods to implement them is essential for decision-making (American Nurses Association, 2008). This paper aims to differentiate the HIT systems from other evaluation types, identify its strategies, and assess the challenges of designing a successful analysis approach.
Health HIT systems are integrated into several industry segments, such as chronic disease treatment, differential diagnosis, wearables, surgery, and artificial organ construction. Each technology’s interactions with patients are unlike and require separate evaluation for nurses to understand if they are practical and reliable. For instance, health information technology systems must be assessed through the creditability of databases utilized and algorithms for proceeding with the results.
In contrast, surgery systems require accurate evaluation, and health wearables need to be tested on patients to be considered workable (Yen et al., 2017). HIT assessment strategies can be based on comparing the results of human research for specific data to the automated one (Yen et al., 2017). Furthermore, the tactic of revising the databases separately from the technology can be employed by a nursing professional.
The HIT system’s effectiveness can be judged through its helpfulness in daily operations as it must optimize and empower working processes. Rahimi and Vimarlund (2007) claim that “there is no standard framework for evaluation effects and outputs of implementation and use of IT in the healthcare setting” (p. 400). However, the results of HIT systems operations can be identified in the decisions made with their assistance, quickness, and correctness compared to the manual processes. Speed of selecting specific treatment approaches is crucial for nurses in an emergency, therefore this factor is influential.
Designing a successful HIT system assessment strategy requires addressing the field where it is exercised, the volume of operations it is capable of performing, and the purpose of a healthcare facility to implement it. Neame et al. (2020) state that “HIT evaluations are important, but they are challenging to conduct and appraise” (p. 104247). Indeed, there are at least two obstacles to creating an optimal strategy: lack of systematic algorithms and a broad field of using the technology.
The first challenge prevents designing a successful HIT evaluation system due to the absence of strict standards and the inability to compare to the other facilities’ solutions because of data privacy (Neame et al., 2020). The second difficulty is related to the demand in using HIT systems for various operations simultaneously and proceeding with a significant volume of data. Consequently, designing the evaluation system requires an individualized approach based on the initial purpose of implementing HIT and the desired outcomes for nursing practitioners.
HIT systems are the reality for most healthcare facilities, therefore nursing professionals need to have basic knowledge about these tools’ capabilities and be able to evaluate their efficiency. Assessment strategies vary based on the technology and segment of implementation. HIT systems evaluation strategies might lack strict algorithms nurses could exercise to study the effectiveness and significance of the volume of information to process. Nursing professionals must identify the reasons to implement HIT and have clear expectations about the outcomes to assess their usefulness.
References
American Nurses Association. (2008). Nursing informatics: Scope and standards of practice. Silver Spring, MD.
Neame, M. T., Sefton, G., Roberts, M., Harkness, D., Sinha, I. P., & Hawcutt, D. B. (2020). Evaluating health information technologies: A systematic review of framework recommendations. International Journal of Medical Informatics, 142, 104247. Web.
Rahimi, B., & Vimarlund, V. (2007). Methods to evaluate health information systems in healthcare settings: A literature review. Journal of Medical Systems, 31(5), 397- 432. Web.
Yen, P. Y., McAlearney, A. S., Sieck, C. J., Hefner, J. L., & Huerta, T. R. (2017). Health information technology (HIT) adaptation: refocusing on the journey to successful HIT implementation. JMIR Medical Informatics, 5(3), e28. Web.