Despite its high cost, the US healthcare system produces relatively short life spans, and is wasteful, inefficient and has serious safety and quality issues. While other industries have surmounted similar challenges by transforming themselves through information technology, healthcare lags behind. Major reasons are that our approaches to care delivery and financial incentives were designed for a bygone era. Beyond that the technology offered to practitioners has often been overly expensive, poorly designed, overly proprietary, hard to implement and difficult to use. Spurred by a unique, one-time Federal stimulus and the new mobile, wireless and cloud technologies now available, this landscape is rapidly changing. To succeed going forward practitioners, and those interested in entering the field, need to understand the new driving forces and have a basic understanding of contemporary clinical informatics. Practitioners, in particular, need to understand the alternative technologies and approaches available for their use in individual patient care and more continuous management of their chronic disease patients. To efficiently meet these needs, this book provides an introduction to the rationale for care transformation through clinical informatics; its application to patient care outside of hospitals; and a look at its future. Key points are illustrated throughout by actual examples of open source and commercial health IT products and services. While written with practitioners and students entering the field of clinical informatics in mind, the book eschews technical terminology and is easily accessible by the lay reader not proficient in clinical medicine or information technology.

Software applications once held on local computers and servers are beginning to shift to the public Internet sphere, and private health information is no exception. The likelihood of placing once restricted and private health records “in the cloud” is increasing. Cloud Computing Applications for Quality Health Care Delivery focuses on cloud technologies that could affect quality in the healthcare field. Leading experts in this area offer their knowledge and contribute to the demystification of healthcare in the Cloud. This publication will prove to be a useful tool for undergraduate and graduate students of healthcare quality and management, healthcare managers, and industry professionals.

Over the last three decades enormous effort has gone into strengthening public health information systems (HIS). They are now a key element of health sector reform initiatives, but are growing in complexity. This is driven by the increasing diversity of technology platforms, increasing demands for information, the multitude of actors involved, and the need for data security and privacy. Initiatives like Universal Health Coverage and Prevention of Non-Communicable Diseases are expected to place further burdens on all health systems. However, they will pose particular challenges in resource-constrained settings, such as low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where health systems have struggled to provide quality care. Public Health Informatics discusses the challenges that exist in the design, development, and implementation of HIS. Key problem areas, such as sub-adequate data and problems of inter-operability, are analysed in detail and the book looks at possible approaches to addressing these challenges in LMICs. Case studies critically appraise the experiences of countries and health programmes in the building of HISs, to determine the successes and failures of varying approaches. Finally, the book explores how future systems in developing countries can be shaped. The expert author team has two decades experience in over 30 LMICs, and includes researchers and practitioners from the fields of informatics, public health, and medicine. This uniquely comprehensive account of information systems in the public health setting will be of use to the wide range of people working in this broad cross-disciplinary field, from software developers to public health practitioners and researchers.

The implementation of cloud technologies in healthcare is paving the way to more effective patient care and management for medical professionals around the world. As more facilities start to integrate cloud computing into their healthcare systems, it is imperative to examine the emergent trends and innovations in the field. Cloud Computing Systems and Applications in Healthcare features innovative research on the impact that cloud technology has on patient care, disease management, and the efficiency of various medical systems. Highlighting the challenges and difficulties in implementing cloud technology into the healthcare field, this publication is a critical reference source for academicians, technology designers, engineers, professionals, analysts, and graduate students.

Advancements in data science have created opportunities to sort, manage, and analyze large amounts of data more effectively and efficiently. Applying these new technologies to the healthcare industry, which has vast quantities of patient and medical data and is increasingly becoming more data-reliant, is crucial for refining medical practices and patient care. Data Analytics in Medicine: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a vital reference source that examines practical applications of healthcare analytics for improved patient care, resource allocation, and medical performance, as well as for diagnosing, predicting, and identifying at-risk populations. Highlighting a range of topics such as data security and privacy, health informatics, and predictive analytics, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for doctors, hospital administrators, nurses, medical professionals, IT specialists, computer engineers, information technologists, biomedical engineers, data-processing specialists, healthcare practitioners, academicians, and researchers interested in current research on the connections between data analytics in the field of medicine.

Key Advances in Clinical Informatics: Transforming Health Care through Health Information Technology provides a state-of-the-art overview of the most current subjects in clinical informatics. Leading international authorities write short, accessible, well-referenced chapters which bring readers up-to-date with key developments and likely future advances in the relevant subject areas. This book encompasses topics such as inpatient and outpatient clinical information systems, clinical decision support systems, health information technology, genomics, mobile health, telehealth and cloud-based computing. Additionally, it discusses privacy, confidentiality and security required for health data. Edited by internationally recognized authorities in the field of clinical informatics, the book is a valuable resource for medical/nursing students, clinical informaticists, clinicians in training, practicing clinicians and allied health professionals with an interest in health informatics. Presents a state-of-the-art overview of the most current subjects in clinical informatics. Provides summary boxes of key points at the beginning of each chapter to impart relevant messages in an easily digestible fashion Includes internationally acclaimed experts contributing to chapters in one accessible text Explains and illustrates through international case studies to show how the evidence presented is applied in a real world setting

Population Health Informatics addresses the growing opportunity to utilize technology to put into practice evidence-based solutions to improve population health outcomes across diverse settings. The book focuses on how to operationalize population informatics solutions to address important public health challenges impacting individuals, families, communities, and the environment in which they live. The book uniquely uses a practical, step-by-step approach to implement evidence-based, data- driven population informatics solutions.