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""Health informatics tools"" From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2010) ""Health informatics tools"" are tools that are used in providing safe and effective delivery of medical care. These tools include computers, clinical guidelines, formal medical terminologies, and information and communication systems (Florida State University, 2012). To provide the safe and effective delivery of medical care, virtually all clinical staff use a number of front-line Health Informatics Tools in their day-to-day operations. The need for standardization and refined development of these tools is underscored by the HITECH act that was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ARRA that was signed by President Barrack Obama of February 17, 2009 (Hersh, 2009). and other efforts to develop electronic medical records. (Often, the development of these electronic processes is hampered by the conversion process from older paper processes, which were developed before the stricter development guidelines required in an electronic environment.) I did not see the need for this sentence To successfully implement each of these tools, hospitals generally must define who is responsible for, and a prescribed manner of building, testing, approving, coding, publishing, implementing/educating, and tracking the tool. [edit] Health Informatics Tools Computer technology is the most common tool used in health informatics. Other tools include communication systems, software packages and clinical guidelines (Chiedozie, 2012). Front-line health informatics tools (sometimes informally called the "Clinical Informatics Toolbelt") generally include, but are not limited to, one of the following : 1. Policies and Procedures - Documents to standardize organizational standards/goals and how to achieve them 2. Procedures - Documents to help learn how to achieve a goal 3. Clinical protocols - Documents used to help standardize and automate delivery of a common clinical therapy 4. Orders - Tools used to document and transmit an instruction to deliver care 5. Order Sets - Tools used to standardize and expedite the ordering process for a common clinical scenario 6. Clinical Pathways - Groupings of order sets, used to standardize the rounding process for a common clinical diagnosis 7. Guidelines - Documents used to communicate general care objectives for a common diagnosis 8. Clinical Documentation (includes Notes, Forms, and Flowsheets) - Documents used to record and transmit a patients' history, condition, responses, therapies, activities, and plan 9. Clinical Templates - Documents used to standardize and expedite the creation of a clinical document 11. Clinical Staff Education Modules - Documents used to educate a staff member about a common clinical subject 12. Clinical Patient Education Modules- Documents used to educate a patient about a common clinical subject 13. Clinical Staff Schedules - Documents used to determine who is responsible for care at a particular date and time 14. Clinical Committee Charters - Documents used to assign responsibility to a clinical committee to perform a particular task 15. Clinical Committee Minutes - Documents used to record the decisions and activities of a clinical committee 16. Telephone Number Lists - Documents used to help contact a clinical staffmember 17. Wikis - Electronic documents used to collect information and web links for a common clinical group 18. Emails, Posters, and Staff Meetings - Tools used to make announcements and deliver short messages Clinical informaticists create clinical changes by properly constructing and implementing these tools. References Chiedozie, A. (2012). The Definition of Health Informatics. Retrieved from Florida State University. (2012). The Florida State Univeristy College of Medicine. Retrieved from Medical Informatics: http://med.fsu.edu/?page=medicalInformatics.home Hersh, W. (2009, may 15). A stimulus to define informatics and health information technology. Retrieved from BMC Medical Informatcis and Decision Making: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6947/9/24