Question

What are the five main core development areas for Health IT? What do we mean by data standards? Give five examples of current data standards that are being used. What is their purpose? What is needed to achieve interoperability between all providers? What types of network standards are necessary in addition to data standards? What has been the role of Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT in data standards and interoperability? What is the Nationwide Health Information Network? How do the standards in the EHR systems and interoperability networks impact the working environment of healthcare professionals? What are the ways health organizations will need to protect health data from threats (man-made and natural disaster) and technological vulnerabilities?

Answer 1

1. Health IT (Health information technology) is the area of involving design,development,creation and use and maintainence of information system for health care industry.

The 5 main core development areas are-translational bioinformatics

-clinical research informatics

-clinical informatics

-consumer health informatics

-public health informatics

2.The health data standards are the methods,protocols and specifications for the collection,exchange, storage and retrieval information associated with health care applications including medicalrecords,medications,payments,reimbursement,medical devices and monitoring systems and administrative process.

3.Currently used data standards:

International classification of diseases-international standard diagnostic classification for all general epidemiological,many health management purposes and clinical use.

LONIC-logical observation identifiers names and codes-this is a universal code system for laboratory and clinical observation

HL7-health level 7 which provides framework for exchange,integration,sharing and retrieval of electronic health information

SNOMED-systematized nomenclature of medicine used to save and retrieve records accurately of clinical care in human and veterinary medicine

SDMX-statistical data and metadata exchange-this provides standard formats for data and metadata together with content and guidelines and an IT architecture for data and metadata.

4.How to maintain interoperability:

interoperability is the abilty of different information technology systems and software applications to communicate,exchange data and use the information that has been exchanged.

To achieve smoothest possible exchange of information it is essential to adopt the standards for the different health sytms to share.For this reason several organisations seeking to unify ineroperability criteria have arisen such as HL7 international,HIMSS,NEMA.