Impact of IT on the Uniting care Aging Centre in healthcare industry

Questions: 1.How the business uses IT? 2.How the business maintains and monitors IT? Answers: The need for IT in the business In every business, it needs information technology and the use of the IT drives innovation, which leads to the success of the business (Bates, 2002). The health industry is growing and the use of the manual services could be time consuming and at the same time expensive. Uniting care Aging Centre are growing tremendously especially through offering their services to the elderly and with increase in the number of the patient it would become hard to manage on the large number. It is important for them to implement the clinical system in order to help in the management of the patients (Bates, 2002). It will provide a much faster and reliable services as comparison to the use of the traditional manual services. The use of this clinical system will enable the staff to be able to process a large amount of data in regards to the tourists as comparison to the manual practices that they were used (Bernstein, McCreless and Cote, 2007). There would be saving when it comes to the labor cost paid to the manual workers since everything will be done by the system. The importance of IT for business survival The use of the information technology is important for the survival of the business in various ways. One of the areas, which it is important, is the areas for example the marketing and the growth of the business (Bernstein, McCreless and Cote, 2007). The success of many businesses usually lies to the marketing, which enables the management to identify on the audience who are targeted, highlights on their needs. In the case of the Uniting care Aging Centre, they would be able to target the elderly individuals since their major business services lies to these individuals. The organization through the marketing strategy campaign they could relay the services they offer to enable those individuals who are elderly in the society to be able to get the services (Bernstein, McCreless and Cote, 2007). The information technology is also important to the survival of the business since it helps to improve on the customer support. This organization is aiming in the implementation of the clinical system to be able to improve on the customer services in the health in their facility. The customer would be able to receive support much conveniently through their emails, telephone or perhaps in the social media when they raise any query or a clarification (Bhattacherjee, Hikmet, Menachemi, Kayhan and Brooks, 2006). The use of the information technology will be important to the survival of the aging Centre care since it would help them to make their services as well as process to become efficient. Additionally, to have a competitive edge over the other rivals they need to implement this system. Requirements for using IT in the business When it comes to the application of IT various elements needs to be looked such as the costs, design, planning, installation of the system and the training of the employees. When it comes to the cost, it is significant for the business to identify a system, which is less costly to them without depleting on their resources (Sittig and Singh, 2010). On the aspect of planning, the adopting of the information technology system should be undertaken systematically considering the process for the implementation, which are significant to have an overall performance. Additionally, it is important to design the system that is based on the specification for a given institution and the needs they have for it (Sittig and Singh, 2010). For the Uniting care Aging Centre they needs to improve on the service delivery to the patients and ease the cumbersome issues which they have been using manual processes. The implementation of the clinical system should suits on all their requirements as well as th e nature of the business (Sittig and Singh, 2010). When it comes to the process of installation, it should be done effectively; considerations are to be made to have a backup system in place especially for monitoring and protecting the data of the patients. Moreover, security measures should be considered to protect the data from any kind of breach. In any new system that is in place there should be training of the employees particularly on how to use it, so that it could run smoothly without any glitches or compromise of the data of the clients. 1. The use of the information technology it is helpful in performing of the various tasks. Through use of the database, the information can be managed and stored easily. The Uniting care Aging Centre will be able to store relevant data in their databases of their computer system. The information technology analysis can act as the decision support tools especially in the situation where the problem is not structured. When it comes to this business, it can be used for both the internal use and the external use (Poon, Jha, Christino, Honour, Fernandopulle, Middleton, Newhouse, Leape, Bates, Blumenthal and Kaushal, 2006). Internal use is via the employees who will be using the system to perform their various duties. The use of the information technology enables there is accountability when it comes to the assessment of the quality as well as the planning of the care services they provide. The clinical system they want to implement will do aware with the manual practices, which were time consuming, and they could be replicated much easily. On the external use, the suppliers as well as the clients could use the technology particularly when the suppliers places orders for the medicines or perhaps when the customers book appointment (Sittig and Singh, 2010). It would become easy when to go to the doctors and avoid the long queues, which they would encounter if they went to the institution. Further, the use of the information technology it is able to capture on the transaction data and be able to create a new transaction that is based on the transaction information. Benefits and advantages IT brings to the business Benefits When it comes to the benefits, the Uniting care Aging Centre can harness the information technology in reducing on the cost (Blumenthal, 2009). The use of the information technology infrastructure could help in centralizing of the tasks to one location hence enabling the process to become less cumbersome and tiresome. Additionally, the organization will be able to achieve economic efficiencies via migration of the high cost functions to the online environment. Additional benefit is that the information technology would bring efficiency as well as flexibility (Blumenthal, 2009). The organization acquiring the clinical system will enable it to have a streamlined workflow system that have a shared along with the collaborative work environment, which can help in the achieving of the efficiency as well as flexibility (Bhattacherjee, Hikmet, Menachemi, Kayhan and Brooks, 2006). The information technology can be beneficial to the staff since they can process a lot of work over a short time frame. Advantages Improved patient-management relationship: the health industry has embraced on the social technology in order to improve on the relationship with the client (Sittig and Singh, 2010). Uniting care Aging Centre can build strong relationship between the organization and the client, which will result to competitive advantage to the other rival organization in the sector. The information technology will bring productivity to the business. The use of the clinical system in Uniting care Aging Centre will enable the staff to collaborate much efficiently, in every department (Devaraj and Kohli, 2003). Additionally, it would enable the automation of the many mundane of the business duties, thus enabling the workers to be able to concentrate to duties, which are significant. Better communication to the business: the connection of the various devices to the system would enable the workers to become connected whenever they go, hence this would help reduce on the time, which is taken particularly when a meeting has been called, or an emergency has happened (Shekelle, Morton and Keeler, 2006). Types of risks IT brings to the business The implementation of the clinical system for the Uniting care Aging Centre may have some risks, which could impact on the business negatively. Below are some of the risk, which could be experienced in this business. Security breach: this could happen when an attacker introduces a malware or perhaps a virus to the system and steal some data. When the patients data has been compromised, it could reflect a negative image to the organization (Devaraj and Kohli, 2003). Other issues related to the breach is corporate espionage particularly when a member of the staff releases patients data online. This become a risk issue when this data falls on the wrong hands. Online fraud: There could be frauds, which could be brought about the information technology se when managing information in the healthcare industry (Goh, Gao and Agarwal, 2011). Some of the practices Uniting care Aging Centre may face is when an individual steals access to the patient account, which do not belong to them and manipulate on that data. Loss of data: This may happen especially when the employees within Uniting care Aging Centre are not well equipped with the skills to handle the system that has been implemented (Sittig and Singh, 2010). Loss of client data could result to loss of the clients, which could impact on the business negatively later on. 2. In every business, it has its own unique way as well as requirement when it comes to implementation of the information technology (Goldschmidt, 2005). The best practice of maintaining and monitoring on the information technology would be having an accessible plan. It is important for an organization such as Uniting care Aging Centre to have a security information technology monitoring hardware. This helps to mitigate on the security breach as well as other vulnerabilities (Mun, Jackson, Park and Probst, 2006). Additionally, it is significant to have a backup system for monitoring of the information technology system to enable that the information, is protected. The Aging health care Centre they need to have an implementation plan to prevent any shortcoming such as the data breach (Goldschmidt, 2005). The implementation plan could contain aspect such as how they could define their accessibility of technology strategies, requirements, the designing as well as developing system and m aintenance (Blumenthal, 2009). This will only be achieved if they are in continue to learn on the processes. Installation of the anti-virus could also be significant to the computers to make sure they are all protected from any form of attacks or perhaps spams. Conclusion In this report, I have discussed on the impacts of the information technology in Uniting care Aging Centre. I have realized the information technology plays an important role in the healthcare industry both negatively and positively. In summary, have learnt that presence of innovation in the business is significant to enable it survive in this digital age. The path to succeed in the business using innovation relates to doing something different, and better to be able to make difference to the value and be productive. The use of information technology has impacted the businesses over the last decades and many organizations are adopting the use of IT. Currently, in many businesses they have incorporated the information technology to their systematic planning, real time monitoring and the customer support to be able to optimize on the efficiency. The adoption of the information technology in the business is both cost effective, it is also an opportunity to the business to optimize on th eir resources more efficiently, and the overall output increases. Information technology can also enable the business to solve complex problems in the business and it offers platform such as digital marketing, which could help the business to market on their products as well as the services. Examples of other applications in the information technology is the use of the cloud computing that would enable the business to become a global leader, and they enable to manage as well as monitor on all the activities of the organization. The Uniting care Aging Centre felt the need to adopt on the clinical system for their business because of pre-dominate, manual as well as the inconsistent processes and practices that were cumbersome. IT has enabled then to manage their duties much quicker and serve the patient effectively. In this research, it has showed how the information technology has influenced the Uniting care Aging Centre business. References Bates, D.W., 2002. The quality case for information technology in healthcare. 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