Health information exchange (HIE) is created to mobilize the health care data in electronic format. HIE strives to gather and unite medical information across healthcare organizations in towns, cities, and regions. Health information exchange enables hospital systems to move and exchange clinical data with each other. This way, clinical agencies can quickly receive and send data to facilitate effective work. It is essential to look at the sustainability of this system and examine the advantages and disadvantages of health information exchange for medical organizations and their patients.
First of all, it is vital to determine the importance of the HIE system. For instance, the case with Memorial Hospital of Manchester speaks about failed information exchange due to conventional methods. Paper documents are transferred hard and for a long time, which undermines the effectiveness of the treatment of the patient. In addition, medical workers can lose these documents or confuse them, so it becomes hard to identify the patient and the disease history.
These conventional ways of transferring information can be challenging to convert to electronic format to establish a compelling work of HIE systems. However, many clinical organizations strive to shift to a health information exchange system because it is more convenient than usual paperwork.
Health information exchange would facilitate the organization in clinical agencies due to its legerity. There are multiple policies and procedures, communication models, and stakeholders’ diversity (Rhodes, 2006). HIE allows medical workers to access essential medical information quickly because of an electronic format. It also has many advantages, such as availability, facility, and efficiency (Zhuang et al., 2020). This system enables clinical organizations to improve public health monitoring, creates a potential opportunity for receiving feedback between medical agencies, and reduces costs for unnecessary paperwork.
However, there are some doubts about health information exchange in practice. HIE structures deal with confidential information and security issues. Initially, this system was described as an ambiguous and obscure definition that deals with many problems, duties, and rights (Rhodes, 2006). To some extent, this can be true because those that are responsible for implementing HIE into medical systems should be able to handle multiple human rights laws, regulations, and stakeholders. Moreover, it is known that various networks can be hacked, and the breakout of private information might happen. It is also important to note that web systems can crash; the data will not be transmitted if the connection is not available.
Participants of any medical organization with an implemented health information exchange network should acquire and follow a particular set of rules (Lenert & McSwain, 2020). For instance, all participants of the HIE structure should stick to one policy and create standard practices for the efficient work of this system. It should include following confidentiality standards, compliance with healthcare privacy, and usage security laws (Rhodes, 2006).
In addition, each participant in health information exchange must be acknowledged with governmental and local confidential principles and reported if these principles are violated. Participants of the HIE structure should not exchange information that can provoke confusion and ambiguity and create problems in other organizations. It is also vital to establish limitations connected with disclosing private clinical information and imply implementing relevant security guarantees.
To sum everything up, the implementation of health information exchange systems might be challenging. There are multiple advantages of this method, such as convenience, speed, and availability. At the same time, clinical organizations risk having their private data confused or hacked, which can undermine any medical agency’s reputation. It is vital to establish rules and stick to organizational principles to handle the HIE system efficiently.
References
Lenert, L., & McSwain, B. Y. (2020). Balancing health privacy, health information exchange, and research in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 27(6), 963–966. Web.
Rhodes, Harry B. (2006). Privacy and security challenges in HIEs: Unique factors add new complexities to familiar issues. Journal of AHIMA 77, 7(1), 70-74. Web.
Zhuang, Y., Sheets, L. R., Chen, Y. W., Shae, Z. Y., Tsai, J. J., & Shyu, C. R. (2020). A patient-centric health information exchange framework using blockchain technology. IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, 24(8), 2169–2176. Web.