Taking A Look At Clinical Informatics

Clinical Informatics
1. Introduction

Clinical informatics also known as healthcare informatics is the use of information technology and informatics in the healthcare avenue. It involves in how data is captured, stored, structured and analyzed. The industry relies on this data to an increasing extent to provide better treatment and care to patients. (Anon., n.d.)

2. Literature Review

Informatics is the science of information and all of its aspects; capturing, processing, storing, analyzing and transmitting data. It converts data and information into something that can be practiced in our day to day lives. The healthcare avenue has become one of the dominant users of informatics and it plays a major role in today’s world of the healthcare

In the past, they used and relied on a paper based system to store and analyze patient records and their medical information. But with the rapid growth of informatics, allowing the industry to use information technology and information systems is more convenient than the previously used paper based system. This technology could be used to manage large workloads whilst reducing the amount of resources and increases quality, convenient for the doctors and patients, this way the efficiency is being increased, saves time and money.

Big data is huge amounts of data put together and analyzed to identify a pattern. Big data is causing a lot of publicity in every industry today including the healthcare industry. In the health care industry it’s been mostly used to cure diseases, predict contagious diseases, improve the quality of our lives and to evade preventable death. With the increase in the world’s population and things evolving rapidly, the way treatment is delivered are also changing speedily. These changes are being determined by data. (Anon.,

It allows an organized way of storing and getting information. This is more of an accurate way rather than the re-gathering patient details. Secondly, the efficiency. It interconnects different departments in the hospital such as the laboratory and administrative departments. So the patient will not have to stay for a long time thus it’s a time saving element. Thirdly, it improves how the patient is taken care of. Through computerized guidelines, high quality treatment could be given to patients by allowing the doctors and the patients to make better decisions. And finally, clinical informatics completely stops the use of paper based systems. This reduces the paper wastage thus making it eco-friendly. (Anon.,