scholarly journals Keep Moving Forward: Health Informatics and Information Management beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (01) ◽  
pp. 075-083
Author(s):  
Barbara L. Massoudi ◽  
Diana Sobolevskaia

Objectives: To identify gaps and challenges in health informatics and health information management during the COVID-19 pandemic. To describe solutions and offer recommendations that can address the identified gaps and challenges. Methods: A literature review of relevant peer-reviewed and grey literature published from January 2020 to December 2020 was conducted to inform the paper. Results: The literature revealed several themes regarding health information management and health informatics challenges and gaps: information systems and information technology infrastructure; data collection, quality, and standardization; and information governance and use. These challenges and gaps were often driven by public policy and funding constraints. Conclusions: COVID-19 exposed complexities related to responding to a world-wide, fast moving, quickly spreading novel virus. Longstanding gaps and ongoing challenges in the local, national, and global health and public health information systems and data infrastructure must be addressed before we are faced with another global pandemic.

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (01) ◽  
pp. 067-073
Author(s):  
Meryl Bloomrosen ◽  
Eta Berner ◽  

Objective: To summarize the recent literature and research and present a selection of the best papers published in 2017 in the field of Health Information Management (HIM) and Health Informatics. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was performed by the two HIM section editors of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Yearbook with the help of a medical librarian. We searched bibliographic databases for HIM-related papers using both MeSH descriptors and keywords in titles and abstracts. A shortlist of 15 candidate best papers was first selected by section editors before being peer-reviewed by independent external reviewers. Results: Health Information Exchange was a major theme within candidate best papers. The four papers ultimately selected as ‘Best Papers’ represent themes that include health information exchange, governance and policy issues, results of health information exchange, and methods of integrating information from multiple sources. Other articles within the candidate best papers include these themes as well as those focusing on authentication and de-identification and usability of information systems. Conclusions: The papers discussed in the HIM section of IMIA Yearbook reflect the overall theme of the 2018 edition of the Yearbook, i.e., the tension between privacy and access to information. While most of the papers focused on health information exchange, which reflects the “access” side of the equation, most of the others addressed privacy issues. This synopsis discusses these key issues at the intersection of HIM and informatics.


2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 146-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Urquhart ◽  
Mary Chambers ◽  
Samantha Connor ◽  
Leo Lewis ◽  
Jeannette Murphy ◽  
...  

2009 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 38-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Cooper

Health information management graduates are employed across health, education, corporate and other sectors. Common to all health information management professionals are foundational skills and knowledge in health sciences, information and management. Unique to each individual is their ongoing education and professional development; professional growth motivated by interest, change and/or opportunity. This presents both challenge and opportunity in the design and content of educational programs. The establishment of the Australian Health Informatics Education Council (AHIEC) (formerly the National Health Informatics Education Committee) provides both framework and opportunity for new ways and approaches to health informatics education in Australia. There are however process matters that proposed changes to education programs need to acknowledge.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (01) ◽  
pp. 084-090
Author(s):  
Meryl Bloomrosen ◽  
Eta S. Berner ◽  

Objectives: To summarize the recent literature and research and present a selection of the best papers published in 2020 in the field of Health Information Management (HIM) and Health Informatics. Methods: A systematic review of the literature for the IMIA Yearbook HIM section was performed by the two section editors with the help of a medical librarian. We searched bibliographic databases for HIM-related papers using both MeSH headings and keywords in titles and abstracts. A shortlist of the fifteen best candidate papers was first selected by section editors before being peer-reviewed by independent external reviewers. Results: The three major themes of Health Information Exchange (transmitting, sharing, and accessing patient health-related data and information) (HIE), Data Quality, and Privacy and Security make up 80% of the fifteen papers, with individual papers on personal health records, information governance and the professionalism of the HIM field. Conclusions: Traditional HIM concerns about HIM practice and workforce as well as issues about the data in electronic health records (EHRs) including data quality, coding, health information exchange among entities within the healthcare systems and privacy and confidentiality continue to be a large part of the HIM research literature. Although there was little research applying these themes to pandemic concerns, HIM professionals have the expertise to make ccontributions to public health informatics research and this research would benefit from their involvement.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (01) ◽  
pp. 087-092
Author(s):  
Meryl Bloomrosen ◽  
Eta S. Berner ◽  

Objectives: To summarize the recent literature and research and present a selection of the best papers published in 2019 in the field of Health Information Management (HIM) and Health Informatics. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was performed by the two section editors with the help of a medical librarian. The search through bibliographic databases for HIM-related papers was achieved using both MeSH headings and keywords in titles and abstracts. A shortlist of 15 candidate best papers was first selected by section editors before being peer-reviewed by independent external reviewers. Results: Over half of the 15 papers addressed the issue of data quality in the electronic health record (EHR). In addition to the focus on data quality, there were papers on other topics of long-standing interest to the field of HIM. These topics include privacy, security, and confidentiality of health information, comparability of different coding vocabularies, classifications and terminologies, and the HIM workforce. Finally, there were papers on newer topics for the HIM field, including mobile Health (mHealth), EHR use by public health departments, and usability of different strategies for displaying information in the EHR. Conclusions: Traditional HIM concerns about HIM practice and workforce as well as issues about data in the EHR including data quality, coding, and privacy and confidentiality continue to be a large part of the HIM research literature. However, newer topics which reflect innovative and emerging technologies, usability assessments, and the application of the EHR outside the traditional clinical setting are starting to appear and more research is needed on these newer areas.


Author(s):  
C. R. Ranjini ◽  
Sundeep Sahay

Large investments are being made to reform the health sector in developing countries as the various reports that indicate this potential of ICT is not being fully realized on the ground in particular settings. In this chapter, an empirical investigation of the introduction of health information systems in the primary health-care sector in India is reported. Three cases—the India Health Care Project, Family Health Information Management System, and Integrated Health Information Management Systems—are presented. The authors argue against adopting a technocentric approach during the development of the HIS and suggest that these efforts should be sensitive to the sociotechnical context. Furthermore, a variety of constraints are identified. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the potentials of integration to address some of the identified constraints.


Author(s):  
Jens H. Weber-Jahnke

Countries around the globe are struggling with the rising cost of delivering health care. In the developed world, this trend is enforced by aging demographics and emerging forms of expensive medical interventions. Disease prevention, early disease detection, and evidence- based disease management are key for keeping health care systems sustainable. Electronic information management has been recognized as a central enabler for increasing the quality of health care while controlling the cost of delivering it. Secondary care facilities (e.g., hospitals) and laboratories have made use of electronic information systems for decades. However, the primary care sector has only recently begun to adopt such systems on a broader scale. The benefit provided by each system in isolation is limited since citizens generally receive their care from a multitude of providers. Health care information systems need to interoperate in order to enable integrated health information management and consequently attain the declared qualitative and economic objectives. Many industrial countries have begun to create common infrastructures for such an integrated electronic health record (EHR) (Blobel, 2006). Different approaches exist, ranging from centralized databases to highly distributed collections of mediated provider-based systems. This chapter describes the architecture of the Canadian infrastructure for health information management, which can be seen as a compromise between a fully centralized and a fully distributed solution. While in Canada the delivery of health care is a matter of provincial territorial authority, the health ministers of all provinces and the federation have created a joint organization called Health Canada Infoway with the mandate to develop an architecture for and foster implementation of a joint interoperability infrastructure for EHRs in Canada. The second major version of this architecture has now been released, and provinces have begun to implement it. The solution is based on the paradigm of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) (Erl, 2004) and embraces a range of domain-specific and technical standards. It leverages and integrates existing investments in health information systems by making them available through interface standards-conform interface adapters. The Canadian EHR architecture has received attention beyond the Canadian context. This chapter reports on this architecture, its enabling technology paradigms, experiences with its implementation, and its limitations.


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