Electronic Health Records Related to Data/Information Potential Challenges, Risks, and Benefits Associated

Electronic Health Records Related to Data/Information Potential Challenges, Risks, and Benefits Associated with Data Safety, and Patient Care

     According to (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017) the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) can improve the ability to diagnose diseases and prevent medical errors. Electronic Health Record (EHR) allows a patient’s clinical team to have complete access to the patient’s medical history, vital signs, medications, labs radiology reports, and the patent’s care plan, ensuring appropriate and consistent care is delivered. A new security risk to healthcare organizations is “ransomware-malicious code that blocks the organization from using their computer systems until a ransom is paid to the hacker” (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017). Hackers use medical records on the dark web to purchase prescriptions, received treatment or make fake medical claims. Obtaining data from the EHR will provide information to the clinical team that will be beneficial in delivering higher quality and safer care to the patients. EHRs are protected by encryption and strong login and passwords to protect patients’ data. Network accessibility and network availability are necessary evils that pose security risks (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017) associated with data safety.

Wearable Devices Related to Data/Information Potential Challenges, Risks, and Benefits Associated with Data Safety and Patient Care

     New technologies to improve patient monitoring include wearable technology devices and wireless area networks, variously called body area networks or patient area networks (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017). One of the challenges of wearable devices is the elderly population cannot operate the device. The benefit of wearable devices is they allow tracking of a patient’s health trends that can can be utilized to treat and manage care to improve a patient’s outcome. A potential risk is wearable devices are highly dependent on real-time health monitoring systems. Hackers can easily attack system vulnerabilities (Jiang & Shi, 2021) compromising data and patient care.

Electronic Health Record trends are the most Promising for Impacting Healthcare Technology in Nursing Practice

     The EHR provides many advantages for nurses, such as medication reminders, preventing drug interactions, immediate access to patient medical history, and documentation of clinical care (Habibi-Koolaee et al., 2015). EHRs allow providers to have access to complete and accurate information, which will allow patients to receive high-quality care (HealthIT.gov, 2019). For example, managing medications through an EHR improves patients outcomes by reducing adverse drug events by 52%. Some EHRs are designed with bar code scanning technology. If a nurse scans the wrong medication, an alert pops up, alerting the nurse of the problem (Hoover, 2017). EHRs have come to the forefront and will remain central to shaping the future of healthcare (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017). EHR will continue to improve data management due to technology continuously evolving.       

Legislation Benefits

     The Legislation established requirements and incentives so that policies could be carried out. As big data use increases, legislation and professional practices must keep pace to ensure that data is utilized appropriately and mistakes are avoided (Milstead & Short, 2019).

                                                                                    References

Habibi-Koolaee, M., Safdari, R., & Bouraghi, H. (2015). Nurses Readiness and Electronic Health Records. ACTA INFORM MED, 23(2), 105-107. doi:10.5455/aim.2015.23.105-107

HealthIT.gov (2019). Improved Diagnostics & Patients Outcomes. https://www.healthit.gov/topic/health-it-and-health-information-exchange-basics/improved-diagnostics-patient-outcomes

Hoover, R. (2017). Benefits of using an electronic health record. Nursing2020 Critical Care, 12(1), 9-10, doi: 10.1097/01.CCN.00508631.93151.8d 

Jiang, D. & Shi, G. (2021). Researched on Data Security and Privacy Protection of Wearable Equipment in Healthcare. Journal of Healthcare Engineering. https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/6656204

McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2017). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Milstead, J. A., & Short, N. M. (2019). Health policy and politics: A nurse’s guide (6th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.