Communication

New Communication and Information Technology in Health Care

Deborah Roberts

University of Phoenix/Axia College Online

Health Care Communication Strategies

HCS/320

La Tasha Nix

May 28, 2012

New Communication and Information Technology in Health Care

Introduction

The communication and information technology in the health care industry has grown leaps and bounds over the last decade. The medical technology that is changing is the way providers input information. Many facilities are changing over to electronic medical records, and sending prescriptions by electronic’s to the pharmacies. There are PDA’s (personal digital assistant) that physicians can use to look up medication and treatments. The systems used to book patient and input patient information has changed from paper to electronic storage. Exploring all of the communication and information technology will put a new light on the way medical facilities operate in the new world of electronics.

Electronic Medical Records

Medical records have been paper based in many years. Over the last twenty years there has been a slow change over to Electronic medical records. There are many different programs out there for facilities to choose from, they just need to find the program that fits with the type specialty they practice (OpenClinical, 2011). There are many terms that can be interchanged, but they mean the same thing. They are electronic medical records (EMR), electronic patient record (EPR), electronic health records (EHR), and computer-based patient record (CPR). They all have specific differences like EMR is care by a single site, where EHR is used by different institutions and sectors (OpenClinical, 2011). The capability of EHR is capture data at the point of care, integrate data from multiple internal and external sources, and support caregiver decision making (OpenClinical, 2011).

Personal Digital Assistant

PDA is short for personal digital assistant, a handheld device that...