Information

Technology
Medical Science
 CONTENTS
Information technology (IT) is the application of computers and telecommunications equipment to store, retrieve, transmit and manipulate
data, often in the context of a business or other enterprise. Today information technology is used in wide range of fields and one of the
upcoming fields is of Medical Science, which is known as Health Information Technology (HIT).

Drug Computer-assisted Electronic Medical Medical Errors

Prescribing Learning (CAL) Records (EMR)

Medical
 Health Information Technology (HIT)

HIT is the application of information processing involving both

computer hardware and software that deals with the storage,
retrieval, sharing, and use of health care information, data, and
knowledge for communication and decision making.

It concerns with the resources, devices, and methods required for

optimizing the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of
information in health and biomedicine.

Technology represents computers and communications attributes

that can be networked to build systems for moving health
information.
 PART 01
Drug Prescribing

Medical
Computerised Physician Order Entry
Firstly, all orders are structured, so that they must
include a dose, route, and frequency; secondly,
they are legible and the orderer can be identified
in all instances; thirdly, information can be
provided to the orderer during the process; and
fourthly, all orders can be checked for a number of
problems including allergies, drug interactions,
overly high doses, drug-laboratory problems, and
whether the dose is appropriate for the patient's
liver and kidney function.
Computerised Physician Decision Support
is also valuable for reducing the frequency of
adverse drug events, even when not linked to
computerisation of the ordering process. This
approach works partly by helping clinicians to
associate key pieces of data, which can be
problematic given the overwhelming stream of
data confronting them.
Robots for Filling Prescriptions
Robots have been used for this in some large
hospitals for some time, and more recently in
smaller hospitals, and they are increasingly being
used in the outpatient setting. No published data
are available, but in one unpublished study a robot
decreased the dispensing error rate from 2.9% to
0.6% (PE Weaver and VJ Perini, American Society
of Health System Pharmacists, 1998).
 Bar Coding

Bar coding is widely used in many industries

outside medicine; it results in error rates about a
sixth of those due to keyboard entry and is less
Computerisation of the
stressful to workers. Bar coding can rapidly ensure
Medication Administration
that the drug at hand is actually the intended one
and can also be used to record who is giving and
Record
receiving it, as well as various time intervals.
Computerised data can be used to detect signals
(such as use of an antidote or a high concentration
of a drug) that are associated with an adverse
reaction. A pharmacist can then evaluate the
Automated Dispensing Devices
incident and determine whether it represents an
Automated dispensing devices can be used to hold adverse drug event, and these data can then be
drugs at a location and dispense them only to a used for root cause analyses.
specific patient. Such devices, especially if linked
with bar coding and interfaced with hospital
information systems, can decrease medication
error rates substantially. Without these links the
effect of these devices is unclear
PART 02
Computer-assisted
Learning (CAL)

Medical
 Computer-assisted Learning
(CAL)

CAL is considered as an enjoyable medium of learning and very

suitable for conceptually difficult topics. Interactive digital
materials for study of histopathology, anatomy and heart
sounds are used widely. Development of anatomical three
dimensional atlases of various internal organs using computed
tomography and magnetic resonance imaging are very
illustrative and help the students to understand the subject
matter clearly.

Medical
 Medical simulators and clinical skill trainers are an effective tool in medical education. They help train students, doctors,
medical personnel, nurses, rescue teams and midwives in developing the necessary skills and techniques before working with
a patient.

“ Medical Simulators
Another development is of "Advanced Life Support" (ACLS) simulators and
Haptics "the science of touch" simulators are used in medical education to
develop various clinical skills such as ECG interpretation, appropriate
intervention such as ABC, drugs, injections, defibrillation without working on a
real patient.

“
 PART 03
Electronic Medical
Records (EMR)

Medical
Electronic Medical
Records (EMR)
This technology can convert medical information into a
single database. Not only does this technology reduce
paper costs, it allows healthcare providers to access
pertinent patient information such as medical history,
medications, insurance information, etc with just the click
of a mouse.
 EMRs hold great promise in the clinical arena. The ability to care for
patients with a record that is integrated with laboratory and pharmacy
information, and provides point of service information regarding
preventive services, diagnosis, treatment, and follow up represents a
dramatic advance in patient care. Improving and measuring quality would
be instantly improved if all clinicians used EMRs. Drug prescribing patterns
of individual clinicians could be carefully evaluated and compared to
established standards. In fact, computer based clinical support as part of
an EMR has been shown to improve physician performance and patient
outcomes.
PART 04
Medical Errors

Medical
 Reducing medical errors has become a priority all over the world. Specifically
adverse drug events are an important source of injuries in hospitalised patients. In
response to the need to improve patient safety, computerised physician order entry
(CPOE) systems have become increasingly more common. In general, CPOE systems
force physicians to write all orders online. These systems have the capacity to verify
that written orders are correct, that is, based on a patient profile, they can
automatically check the dose and contraindications of a specific drug. They have
been shown to dramatically reduce serious medication errors.

80% 55%

Reduce total medication Adverse (serious with

error rates harm to patient) errors
Summary
There is no argument over the influence of IT in medicine
and education. But there are still many areas which need to
be improved before we could utilise IT to its full extent. Last
but not the least, however advanced the technology gets, it
can never replace the interaction the doctors and students
require with the patient and the clinical judgments which
make great doctors. So, in the pursuit of modern
technologies, we should be careful that the doctor patient
relationships do not get overlooked.

Medical
 THANKS
Medical Science
https://www.asianhhm.com/articles/role-information-technology-medical-sciences
https://www.3bscientific.com/medical-simulators,pg_1181.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1117776/
 My Exercises
Exercise #1
Exercise #2

Exercise #3-4
Exercise #5