New research looks at Internet and health care
They’re uneasy bedfellows at best
Gartner Group Inc. in Stamford, CT, a leading supplier of research, analysis, and advice in all areas of information technology, recently published its list of top 10 trends. Among its conclusions: The Internet will provide health care providers with their biggest information technology challenge.
At the same time, Gartner Group said that despite the problems still associated with e-commerce, providers who fail to offer their clients e-health options are destined to struggle. The findings were presented at the most recent meeting of the Healthcare Information and Manage-ment Systems Society in Dallas.
Gartner found that personal health records will not eliminate the need for an organization to have a computer-based patient record system and that health care providers should look to information system staffing alternatives such as outsourcing and application hosting. But management teams, the Group cautioned, must have a clear business plan, a set of expectations, and an understanding of the pros and cons of outsourcing before making any decisions.
Gartner Group also found that today’s health care consumers are looking for information tools that will help them save money and reduce medical errors, and that without "aggressively embracing automation," health care providers will find it difficult to achieve the 50% reduction in errors recommended by the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine in Washington, DC. The group contends the best way for health care providers to conform with the mandates of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is by investing money judiciously and using the least amount of manpower necessary to comply with the regulations.
Accompanying that study, the academy’s National Research Council also released a report at the meeting in Dallas, stating that there are a host of technological hurdles that must be overcome before the Internet can be used as an effective tool for health care providers. The study found several problems inherent with the current state of e-health.
Perhaps one of the most serious problems, the study found, is that e-health providers and the companies developing Internet technology are not working in tandem, so there is no guarantee that the networks are even able to carry the information. Security is also a problem, and currently, the study reported, the Internet is not able to provide the high levels of security needed to protect people’s private health information such as the results of an HIV test. Even if these problems are remedied, the study found that too few people are connected to make the Internet a viable source for health care.
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