Healthcare Information Technology Vendors

1. Describe healthcare information technology vendors responses to nursing demand for improved information systems.

Vendors of healthcare information technology play an important role in the responses to nursing demand for improved information systems. They develop products in accordance with the standards and certification criteria adopted by the HHS Secretary. There are a wide variety of software products offered by an array of diverse vendors that nurses use to plan, document, manage, and evaluate patient care like the “NICHE” applications focus on a discrete set of nursing functions such as care planning.

“DEPARTMENTAL” systems address a more comprehensive set of functions. This is either of the three: for a single point of service such as labor and delivery; or department such as cardiology; or closely aligned group of departments such as the perioperative suite.

2. Give some goals of Vendor Application to nurses.

Vendors do not only offer products that facilitate patient care, but also create products that support quality management, staff scheduling, supply management, and other patient-care-related nursing activities. Vendors are delivering more robust and tightly integrated clinical solutions that better address the needs of all health care providers for more coordinated, streamlined patient care delivery. While some vendors offer clearly superior nursing applications, no solutions; each has different strengths and limitations.

3. Do you think that nurses should be provided education based on emergency planning and response? Why?

Yes nurses should be provided education based on emergency planning and response because one benefit of better preparation...has been improved coordination between the public health and hospital-based sectors. And nurses was really in need to be provided education based on emergency planning and response because everything changes as times goes by and learning was something that must not end for when you are learning some new things this things would serve as your weapon to be a better person/nurse in everything that you do and in the future.

4. Give important aspect of informatics solutions for emergency planning and response

Incident management system (IMS) was first used by firefighters to control disaster scenes in a multijurisdictional and interdepartmental manner.

The IMS calls for a hierarchical chain of command led by the incident manager or commander. Each job assignment is consistently followed by assigned personnel who refer to a specific job action sheet.

The IMS has been adapted for hospital use and is called the Hospital Emergency Incident Command System (HEICS)

A broader assessment of possible informatics contributions unveils that informatics can also contribute to increasing the efficiency in disaster response as well as providing a tele-presence for remote medical caregivers. This presentation will explore current and future roles of informatics in emergency preparedness and response. Special challenges for data management occur with every emergency or disaster. Tracking of victims, electronic health records, and supply inventory are a few of the contributions that informatics can play during disasters. Modeling of response resources can provide the parameters for more effective decision making. Public relations reporting can be made more accurate if given the information in a timely fashion. Databases provide the infrastructure for reporting of data that can be used to manage volunteers or later be mined to determine the effectiveness of planning and response efforts. As informaticists, we have a moral obligation to contribute to the emergency response agenda worldwide.

5. Where do you see technology being used today to advance the different missions of the emergency management community?

The role of technology in emergency management is to connect, inform and ultimately save the lives of those impacted by disasters. Technology restores connectivity to impacted areas so that governments can communicate with citizens and people can find their loved ones. Technology enables responders to coordinate rescue missions and work efficiently from the minute they arrive in a disaster zone, and helps businesses recover so communities can begin to rebuild faster. Lastly, after and in between incidents, technology helps us analyze, track and study natural disasters so that we can always be learning and developing better solutions — and prepare to save more lives.