The Impact of Health Information Technology on Hospital Performance: A Systematic Integrative Literature Review

Objective: To review, categorise, and synthesise findings from literature on health information technology (HIT) functionalities, HIT use, and the impact of HIT on hospital performance. Materials and Methods: We conducted a systematic integrative literature review based on a compre-hensive database search. To organise, categorise and synthesise the ex-isting literature, we adopted the affordance actualization theory. To align the literature with our research framework, we used four categories: 1) the functionalities of HIT and how these functionalities are measured;2) use and immediate outcomes of HIT functionalities;3) different perfor-mance indicators and how HIT functionalities affect them;and 4) what hospital characteristics influence the outcome of hospital performance. Results: Fifty-two studies were included. We identified four types of HIT. Only ten studies (19.2%) define the use of HIT by explicitly meas-uring the use rate of HIT. We identified five dimensions of hospital per-formance indicators. Every dimension showed mixed results;however, in general, HIT has a positive impact on mortality and patient readmis-sions. We found several hospital characteristics that may affect the rela-tionship between HIT and hospital-level outcomes. Discussion: Further efforts should focus on embedded research on HIT functionalities, use and effects of HIT implementations with more performance indicators and adjusted for hospital characteristics. Conclusion: The proposed framework could help hospitals and researchers make decisions regard-ing the functionalities, use and effects of HIT implementation in hospi-tals. Given our research outcomes, we suggest future research opportuni-ties to improve understanding of how HIT affects hospital performance. .

The Elder Health Information Technology Framework for Geriatric Care in Rural India: A Policy Initiative

Healthcare monitoring and analysis of healthcare parameters is a reality to reduce costs and increase access to specialist and experts that holds the future for geriatric care in India. This paper proposes distinct methods towards the implementation of rural elder health information technologies (IT), which includes electronic medical records, clinical decision support, mobile medical applications, and software driven medical devices used in the diagnosis or treatment of disease for the older adult population in the villages of India. The purpose is online patient satisfaction at the microlevel (village panchayat) through methods accessible and affordable by establishing a common standard of operations at the village primary care units giving way to early disease detection and routine screening among the aged population avoiding institutionalization. The rural elder health IT framework is of great interest for all stakeholders in the field, as it benefits the investors and the consumers, adding to the technological infrastructure, thereby opening new avenues of research in health informatics, telemedicine and enhancing the scope of geriatric research, which in turn enhances the health-related quality of life for the rural older adults in the remote villages of the nation.

Bridging Healthcare and Health IT

Health IT （Information Technology） is new to the healthcare industry, even though the term surfaced in 2008 the true meaning of what it is and how data aggregation, evaluation, and validation of patient data and information drives a successful quality healthcare organization. Understanding of key factors, what quality is and how it is measured, helps bridge together healthcare and technology for an organization to be successful in reporting quality measures for the best patient care.

Knowledge Representation in Patient Safety Reporting: An Ontological Approach

Purpose： The current development of patient safety reporting systems is criticized for loss of information and low data quality due to the lack of a uniformed domain knowledge base and text processing functionality. To improve patient safety reporting, the present paper suggests an ontological representation of patient safety knowledge. Design/methodology/approach： We propose a framework for constructing an ontological knowledge base of patient safety. The present paper describes our design, implementation,and evaluation of the ontology at its initial stage. Findings： We describe the design and initial outcomes of the ontology implementation. The evaluation results demonstrate the clinical validity of the ontology by a self-developed survey measurement. Research limitations： The proposed ontology was developed and evaluated using a small number of information sources. Presently, US data are used, but they are not essential for the ultimate structure of the ontology.Practical implications： The goal of improving patient safety can be aided through investigating patient safety reports and providing actionable knowledge to clinical practitioners.As such, constructing a domain specific ontology for patient safety reports serves as a cornerstone in information collection and text mining methods.Originality/value： The use of ontologies provides abstracted representation of semantic information and enables a wealth of applications in a reporting system. Therefore, constructing such a knowledge base is recognized as a high priority in health care.