Advanced Information Management and the Application of Technology A1. Advantages & Disadvantages The healthcare system is consistently changing for the better. With those changes, healthcare facilities must evolve in the methods they manage that sensitive information about our patients. Health information systems (HIS) are technology-based platforms for the storage and transmit of patient’s medical records. Based on the information that is obtained from HIS, it can help create new policies, program development, research, and effective patient outcome. When it comes to developing a HIS, we must consider the following advantages and disadvantages: usability, interoperability, scalability, and compatibility. Some of the advantages of any HIS are the reliable of prescribing/medication documentation and past medical history reconciliation. Having accurate medication information, can help with more accurate patient care and decrease the risk of medication interaction or overprescribing narcotics. The accurate and real time documentation can help with improving patient outcome. Providers can document at the bedside to help with accurate, and real time documentation. As I work in the emergency room, having accurate and real time information is imperative during critical life-saving events. Also, during those events, having the ability to pull up prior visits and critical information can also help with increasing positive patient outcomes. With all the advantages of HIS, it can help with reduction of wasteful costs, reduction in length of stay, better patient outcome, and increase in profitability. Some of the disadvantages of any HIS are technical difficulties or glitches, and the cost of implementation of new HIS. There is always some form of technical issues when i mplementing new HIS systems. Some of those issues can cause moderate to severe delays which can cause additional money. The issues can also cause a delay in accessing accurate patient information which can potentially decrease a positive patient outcome. Another disadvantage is the training of all the staff on the new HIS. The training would require extra hours for the staff and the educators responsible for the training. Usability is one of the most important aspect of a HIS that providers and other healthcare professionals look for. One of the advantages of using a HIS is the drop-down features. The drop-down features create a more uniform charting and easily for all parties to review the charting. However, a disadvantage of drop-down boxes is the choices are very limited and they do not allow to give the whole story. Some HIS have added a feature where the clinician can add a comment to a particular section to address what was not a choice on the drop-down box and give a more detail summary of the patient. Again, this can take away for the providers by having to add comments and not taking care of the patient in an appropriate manner. Interoperability is the ability for HIS to communicate with other platforms and/or software by the exchange of data, and the interpretation of that data. By having a HIS that can communicate with multiple other platforms or software can help reduce in medical errors especially with lab results. At the emergency room, we depend on the lab’s ability to process our specimens and record the results into their software and having that data transfer to our HIS for our review in an accurate and short time. If the HIS is not able to interpret the data that is being transmitted from the lab, we will not be able to accurately treat our critical care patients and result in a very negative outcome like death. Another disadvantage is the cost for implementing the HIS and all supporting software, computers, scanners, and associated consistent upgrades