Term Paper on "Managing Information Technology"

Term Paper 13 pages (6095 words) Sources: 10 Style: Harvard

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Managing Information Technology - Set of Four Reports

Knowledge Management in Health Care

Managing, organizing and making available to healthcare professionals the many types of content that comprise knowledge management systems require a flexible yet comprehensive content management framework as a foundation and process-based workflows at the user-level to stay continually relevant over time. Enterprise content management (ECM), and within that framework, Digital Asset Management (DAM), has lead to the development of medical knowledge management systems that deliver significant value over time. As this medical field specifically relies on both structured content in the from of patient records, and digital content in the form of x-rays, microphotography of their eye condition, and digital imagery of specific patient conditions, the need for a knowledge and content framework is clear.

In evaluating the growth knowledge management systems in healthcare it is critical to keep in mind the unmet needs these systems are designed to meet. Foremost in this list of unmet needs is the ability to manage both structured and highly textual content in conjunction with and often in the same database record as highly detailed, sophisticated graphical content that applies to each patient. The bottom line is that any research effort to discover, quantify and project how the advancements in IT will influence the healthcare field needs to start with central focus on the unmet needs of practitioners for the most up-date and relevant information. The intersection of healthcare's unmet needs in the form of processes relative to advances in IT, specifically in the areas of enterprise content management, digital asset management, security, collaboration and integration systems that were stand-alone before is addressed in this analysis.

Knowledge Management in Healthcare -- An Assessment of Unmet Needs

Healthcare's series of unmet needs are forming the foundation for a series of product and solution development strategies on the part of many software, hardware and services companies globally. What's so significant about the unmet needs of the medical practices globally is the direct effect the lack of fulfillment of these needs are having on the organizational goals of entire medical institutions including hospitals, clinics and individual practices. Reducing diagnosis errors, coordinating on treatment plans across patients with similar diseases and conditions, analyzing the extent of treatment plan effectiveness as delivered by clinicians (Ghosh, Judy E. Scott. 2009) and alleviating the need for clinicians to transcribe data from one computer system to another are all major unmet needs of the healthcare profession today. The U.S. And other nations have set four major objectives in the defining of knowledge management systems and these include the following: keeping clinicians informed as to new developments through a Web-based portal that is continually refreshed with new content; interconnecting clinicians so they can share best practices on advances in healthcare globally; personalizing and better analyzing patient care strategies; and improving broader population health by using IT from the content of websites for preventative health programs. These four broad goals are driven from the unmet needs of optometry clinicians and physicals.

The unmet needs of the healthcare community that are in turn driving the greater application and adoption of IT-based strategies for helping healthcare organizations meet their needs are as follows:

A major unmet need in delivering more timely and more accurate access to information including patient records, patient imagery, test results and treatment results. At present there are many manually-based processes, for example calling a local medical clinic and having to get a clerk on the phone to get a specific record. This is a major unmet need as it relates to responsiveness and speed of service to both the patient and the clinician delivering a diagnosis or treatment plan. The most pressing unmet need is to have these records online, integrated with many other systems including patient billing and accounting, patient history, and diagnosis analysis to accomplish the goal of delivering a 360 degree view of the patient on every inquiry.

Lack of consistency in existing manual processes aimed at the managing of chronic conditions. This unmet need emanates from the currently high levels of miscommunication medical clinicians, specialist MDs and patients with chronic conditions patients are experiencing. What exacerbates this lack of communication is that each treatment plan is slightly different treatment plans. The goal of many optometry clinics and practices is to create a self-management series of online tools where on the treatment side (clinicians, MDs) can have a 360 degree view of the treatment plan and with feedback from the patient, see if the treatments are making a positive impact on their eye-related conditions.

Greater levels of professional productivity through better collaboration, scheduling and coordination of medical clinicians and specialist MDs. This isn't simply about being able to see more patients or dispensing more prescriptions, it's about being able to have a more comprehensive view of the patient treatment plans for advanced diseases and conditions that a given medical discipline specializes in treating. This includes drug interactions that clinicians and specialist MDs both need to have instantly as they prescribe treatment plans for patients. Currently clinicians and specialist MDs have to look either through multiple systems or through a series of books to figure out what if any interactions there are to medications. Appling IT strategies to this unmet need would include integrating all databases internally to the practice in addition to subscribing to external information sources, all unified with a common search technology that would, from a single query, provide the medical professional with the information requested. Another aspect of this unmet need of increasing productivity is the scheduling of appointments between clinicians and specialist MDs in addition to those with patients. Moving away from manual systems in this area is also a critical step for higher levels of productivity for clinicians, specialist MDs and staff at clinics and hospitals alike.

Streamlining and making more efficient processes for patients to fill out their clinic paperwork, check on the status of their medications, and also provide feedback in the form of customer satisfaction surveys is a major unmet need is creating a full-cycle approach to patient care. One of the most glaringly obvious unmet needs in the entire medical profession is this specific area of streamlining what is called "on boarding" of new patients and measuring their satisfaction with the level of service delivered. The first series of processes, those of signing up new patients is fraught with inefficiencies and errors, and making this online, even for the medical clinics' staff is a potential major improvement. Capturing patient feedback on what is going well and what isn't is also a critical unmet need; only a very small percentage of medical clinicians and specialists get feedback on how their treatment programs are working, how their empathy skills are being perceived, and in short, how satisfied the patients. Clearly this link to customer satisfaction is a major unmet need in the medical practice area.

Lack of integration with health services providers, specifically those paying for the care of patients including HMOs, PPOs and health insurance organizations. This is perhaps one of the aggravating unmet needs in the medical profession and is exacerbated again in medical practices due to the fact that a person's sight is involved (Themistocleous, Mantzana, Morabito, 2009). The lack of IT systems-level integration between health services providers, HMOs, PPOs and health insurance organizations significantly slows down the time required to fulfill claims for patients, and in turn slows down the finances of clinics, physician offices, and hospitals. Clearly the need for greater levels of integration specifically in this area is critical, and as a major unmet need being addressed through IT strategies, this forms the basis for the framework emerging for comprehensive knowledge management systems that can integrate with these external providers and the many clinics and hospitals that rely on reimbursement to finance their daily operations.

Summary

The use of content management systems to create enterprise frameworks for the more efficient managing of knowledge management in healthcare has also led to the development of quality management benchmarks for performance that otherwise would not have been possible (Nembhard, 360, 361). This is due to the fact that more hospitals, medical centers and healthcare professionals have been able to manage their growing caseloads through the use of knowledge management systems that also have analytics and performance measurement included within them. The use of knowledge management systems to enable higher levels of collaboration between medical professionals and also nurture greater levels of process efficiencies is a key aspect of the medical profession being able to attain the highest levels of performance possible (Themistocleous, Mantzana, Morabito, 2009).

The Oracle Vision

Summary

Oracle Corporation is the world's largest enterprise software company, with revenues of $23.6B, gross profit of $12.7B and Net Income of $5.74B. The company has also completed 53 different acquisitions over the last ten years, and CEO Larry Ellison has often said they like playing the role of market consolidator over competing with smaller, best-of-breed enterprise software competitors. Most recently Oracle purchases Sun Microsystems, one of the… READ MORE

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