The Crucial Role of IT in Advancing Medical Science and Education

Role of IT in Medical Science and Education

Nowadays, Information Technology is used in a variety of sectors and, one of them is, a medical science that is known as Health Information Technology.

It has become an individual application of computer and telecommunication equipment instead of being part of Information Technology due to its wide worldwide usage and advancements. In simpler terms, Health Information Technology is a blend of information science, healthcare and computer science.

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Not only the healthcare, but it has also made a major impact on medical education globally a long time back. All the medical students are computer literate these days and, all the latest information regarding medical topics are readily available all over the internet. Just like organizations worldwide are getting digitally transformed, educational institutes are coming up with online programs as student portals to coordinate their courses. The benefit of these programs is that it allows the students, tutors, and others to access information smoothly.

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Another advancement in the area of medical science because of Information Technology is Advanced Life Support or ACLS stimulators and Haptics stimulators through which medical students can develop skills like ECG interpretation, effects of drugs and injections without using them on an actual patient. It is the time wherein advanced medical simulation technologies and medical databases are accessible in advanced medical schools that gives a vast exposure to medical students that can be proved essential at the time of medical emergency situations.

CAL is considered an enjoyable medium of learning and very suitable for conceptually difficult topics. Interactive digital materials for the study of histopathology, anatomy and heart sounds are used widely. The development of anatomical three-dimensional atlases of various internal organs using computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging are very illustrative and help the students to understand the subject matter clearly.

Drug prescribing patterns of individual clinicians could be carefully evaluated and compared to established standards. In fact, computer based clinical support as part of an EMR has been shown to improve physician performance and patient outcomes.

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Reducing medical errors has become a priority all over the world. Specifically, adverse drug events are an important source of injuries in hospitalized patients. In response to the need to improve patient safety, computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems have become increasingly more common. In general, CPOE systems force physicians to write all orders online. These systems have the capacity to verify that written orders are correct, that is, based on a patient profile, they can automatically check the dose and contraindications of a specific drug. They have been shown to dramatically reduce serious medication errors.

Information technology has been very helpful to the healthcare sector. One example of a significant advancement that IT has provided to hospitals is the development of electronic medical records (EMR). This technology can convert medical information into a single database. Not only does this technology reduce paper costs, but it also allows healthcare providers to access pertinent patient information such as medical history, medications, insurance information, etc with just the click of a mouse.

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IT has also played a major role in research and development while fighting with COVID 19 along with its variants like Delta, and ongoing Omicron. The number of achievements in the health sector achieved due to Information Technology is tremendous and increasing each day!