Healthcare IT (IHC as case study)

Content:

The lecture on "Research Methods in Healthcare IT" was very interesting as it was able to give clear idea of how health informatics is being implemented. The lecture was based on the case study of Intermountain Healthcare (IHC). The case study showed how the clinical data are being used in decision making. The speaker also explained the architecture of healthcare IT; integration engine, EMR, Central Data Repository, Enterprise Data Warehouse being the main components. Data standards, data dictionary, and data normalization was also covered in the lecture, which are very important parts during the implementation of a data warehouse. The different kinds of clinical data repositories, relational databases (MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle) and object repositories(XML), were also explained. We also studied when to use central data repository and enterprise data warehouse. Generally, data warehouse is used for large comparative queries that leads to the creation of "knowledge". In case of normal data repositories, they are optimized for specific domain and are very useful for real-time queries. The outcome of the implementation showed the impact of Healthcare IT, and we can definitely enhance its uses to improve healthcare.

Posted by
Prabal