Electronic Resources for Healthcare

Currently, technological advancements are steadily affecting ways in which a vast area of healthcare operates. Previously, communication within different areas of healthcare posed some challenges that led to a misdiagnosis, patient-healthcare provider confusion, and fraudulent health records. There are evidence-based applications, automated websites, and multimedia resources that provide timely communication between patients, health care providers, stakeholders, and government agencies. A plethora of studies have indicated that electronic resources for healthcare have changed how healthcare records are handled. However, in the last few decades, these studies have only assessed the relationship between healthcare electronic resources and patient care confining their data on privacy, and personalized care. The approach from these studies creates a gap in knowledge as there is a need to assess the interaction between these resources and caregivers, patient, and family members. Thus, there is a need to understand these resources beyond health records. This paper succinctly assesses three electronic resources for healthcare focusing on their use and the implications in the healthcare industry.

Electronic Resources for Healthcare

Description of the Resources

One of the electronic resources available is Healthjump. The website has been adopted by different healthcare institutions including Kettering Cancer Center where patients, healthcare providers, and other stakeholders securely communicate with their patients and doctors and share information with close families.

Through this resource, patients can securely send information, track their appointments and reduce identity fraud once they download and install an application that connects users to Healthjump website (Katehakis, 2018).

MyFitnessPal is a well-enhanced and encrypted application that offers public support for health, fitness, dietary requirements, and blood sugar monitoring. The application comes with pre-installed tools that pick a patient case and offer instructions; and on the physician to consult and in some cases, professional counseling on fitness management (Bajwa, Singhm & De, 2017).

Epic and Cerner is a website that allows users to take charge of their health records through smartphones. The resource also comes with an app that can be installed on smartphones and linked to the website to allow users to check and manage their health and regular consultations. For instance, the resource includes a tool known as Epic and Cerner Professional Network that helps patients to network with medical service providers for timely assistance.

How Healthcare Providers Use the Resources

There is a consensus among studies that health care providers use these resources to enhance medical records, consultations, reduction of medical records fraud, and enhancement of individual wellness (Wang et al., 2017; Katehakis, 2018). In particular, Epic and Cerner, and Healthjump provide health treatment information that allows patient-centered care and individually identifiable resources that help the patients and doctors monitor treatment, health status and records on payments including insurance covers (Katehakis, 2018). On the other hand, healthcare providers use MyFitnessPal to access patients’ protected health information so that healthcare provision is person-centered. According to Bajwa et al. (2017), Epic and Cerner won most electronic health records contracts among different community hospital in the United States between 2015 and 2016 because doctors observed that the resource could help connect patients with the community hospital.

Implications of the Resources

These resources have widened knowledge in healthcare provision between doctors and patients. Reporting on Epic and Cerner, Bajwa et al. (2017) argued that the resource has benefited both the consumers and doctors since it provides a one on one support so that as the doctor understands the patient at personalized level, the consumer or the patient gain the needed clinical knowledge and insight into their medical processes. With these applications and websites, consumers are given the freedom to download the resources and take charge of their data, track their payments records, and identify the risk of identity fraud that could arise from third party service providers such as insurance. According to Katehakis (2018), these resources are now Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant meaning that consumers are now guaranteed of their privacy and security.

References
Bajwa, N. K., Singh, H., & De, K. K. (2017). Critical Success Factors in Electronic Health Records (EHR) Implementation: An Exploratory Study in North India. International Journal of Healthcare Information Systems and Informatics (IJHISI), 12(2), 1-17.
Katehakis, D. G. (2018). Electronic Medical Record Implementation Challenges for the National Health System in Greece. International Journal of Reliable and Quality E-Healthcare (IJRQEH), 7(1), 16-30.
Wang, S. V., Rogers, J. R., Jin, Y., Bates, D. W., & Fischer, M. A. (2017). Use of electronic healthcare records to identify complex patients with atrial fibrillation for targeted intervention. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 24(2), 339-344.