Health informatics tools

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 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.)

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.

Health Informatics Tools

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 - Tools to standardize organizational standards/goals and how to achieve them
2. Procedures - Tools to help learn how to achieve a goal
3. Clinical Protocols - Tools used to help standardize and automate a common clinical scenario
4. Clinical Pathways - Tools used to standardize the rounding process for a common clinical diagnosis
5. Guidelines - Tools used to communicate general care objectives for a common diagnosis
6. Orders - Tools used to document and transmit an instruction to deliver care
7. Order Sets - Tools used to standardize and expedite the ordering process for a common clinical scenario
8. Clinical Documentation (includes Notes, Forms, and Flowsheets) - Tools used to record and transmit a patients' history, condition, responses, therapies, activities, and plan
9. Clinical Templates - Tools used to standardize and expedite the creation of a clinical document
11. Clinical Staff Education Modules - Tools used to educate a staff member about a common clinical subject
12. Clinical Patient Education Modules- Tools used to educate a patient about a common clinical subject
13. Clinical Staff Schedules - Tools used to determine who is responsible for care at a particular date and time
14. Clinical Committee Charters - Tools used to assign responsibility to a clinical committee to perform a particular task
15. Clinical Committee Minutes - Tools used to record the decisions and activities of a clinical committee