Dr. Julie Jacko — Advantages of Health Informatics
Health Informatics expert, Dr. Julie Jacko says it has many advantages as it provides improvements to the efficient delivery, cost and quality of healthcare. Health informatics combines information science, information systems, technology and healthcare. A multidisciplinary field, health informatics helps health care providers manage resources, standardize medical care, coordinate research and provide for the more efficient delivery of healthcare. Dr. Julie Jacko is the Principal Investigator and Director of the University Partnership for Health Informatics (UP-HI). She is Editor of the recent Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies, and Emerging Applications, published by Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates in 2003
More than 50 percent of the nation’s health care costs are wasted on inefficient processes according to the April 2006 report to the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Health informatics can considerably save health care dollars with labor-intensive medical procedures which can be automated. Health informatics can reduce the mistaken interpretation of written orders and possible malpractice lawsuits and eliminate human error, says Julie Jacko. If physician medical orders are computerized with the help of health informatics, it will reduce errors in medical procedures and make better health care possible. Health records management can be greatly improved with health informatics and this is perhaps its greatest advantage, says Dr. Julie Jacko, Principal Investigator and Director of the University Partnership for Health Informatics (UP-HI).
In an emergency situation, a patient is often unable to provide specific details of his medical history. With health informatics, a comprehensive patient health record can provide life-saving information. Many times relocation of families results in loss of past medical records and childhood immunization records. With health informatics, says Julie Jacko there can a network of existing health care systems and a dependable records system that follows a patient medical history through his entire life.
Not only is an electronic health record valuable for an individual patient but if networked together, it can track medical details for the entire populations. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began tracking health data on 75 percent of American children under age 6 since December 2008. Dr. Julie Jacko is a Professor of Public Health at the University of Minnesota, and a Faculty Fellow in the Academic Health center’s Institute for Health Informatics. She says if an outbreak of measles occurs in a given region, health care providers can access a database to track new cases as they are diagnosed and determine how many children in the area have been vaccinated. Health informatics allows for researchers and physicians to observe disease trends and health outcomes for large populations.
Most patients do not always follow medical advice given by their physicians. Health informatics helps determine patient motivation and provides solutions. When a physician is serving a low-literacy patient population, instead of providing medical literature and written information on medication, health informaticians can develop multimedia materials and audio instructions. This will help patients know more about their medical problems and follow instructions, informs Julie Jacko.
