Competitiveness and Performance Effectiveness for Health Care IT System

Therefore, efficiency of IT in the health sector is mainly meant to develop better decision making, provide proactive outreach to patients, enhance continuity care, increase information exchange within and across organizations, put an end to the time-consuming and error-prone processes of document use, improve prevention and treatment outcomes of the patients and finally, connect patients with community by providing educational resources that can better manage their health (Noe, 2003). It is of the essence to note that health IT can only be applicable if the Information Technology personnel are involved. In this paper we will look at two important IT personnel, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). The CIO is an executive employee who is accountable for all the IT related issues in a healthcare organization.

CIO works towards overcoming all the IT challenges and provide the solution to those problems by planning and managing the digital data that is at the disposal of the organization (Smith, 2003). Technology can become useful to people if it makes their work easier or if it lowers the cost. A poorly designed technology can cost an organization its good reputation and further develop bad blood with its clients (Henderson & Venkatraman, 1993). Therefore, when developing this technological innovation the parties concerned should be held accountable for its success. Failure should not be tolerated and the design should fit the needs of the clients. The second practice for effective IT alignment and strategic planning initiative would be to effectively train the targeted users (Shekelle, 2006).

The most effective strategy for adopting technology in a health care system is job shadowing. Job shadowing is a hybrid training strategy that encompasses both the coaching technique and mentoring technique. The mentoring and coaching techniques in training is one where mentors, who should be a more experienced worker, trains and mentors the worker. Job shadowing, however, is a more effective mode of training where employees are put in pairs of slightly difference experience levels where the less experienced employee learns by shadowing the experienced worker. The less experienced worker performs the same role as the experienced worker (Shekelle, 2006). There are other technologies that are emerging and they are intended to solve big problems and certainly build a better health care system.

The Blockchain technology is among the recent emerging technological development. Blockchain technology has initially been downgraded by most healthcare leaders. The idea behind this technology is that it a type of distributed ledger or database, which is meant for constantly developing lists of ordered registers called blocks. The most admirable aspect of this technology is that by design they are resilient to modification of the data. Information Technology has a key setback of security and privacy issues. Privacy in most cases is referred to as the capability of protecting sensitive information about personally identifiable healthcare information. The main dissimilarity between security and privacy is that security is the safekeeping, reliability and accessibility of data whereas privacy is the proper use the information provided (Williams, 2010).

The focus of privacy and security protection lies in the protecting of data from malicious attacks and data theft. Though, it is important to understand that security is crucial in protecting data but it is not sufficient enough to address the privacy issue. It is the solution in protecting and upholding ownership of data especially in electronic devices and into the cloud. Encryption is therefore necessary in avoiding revelation to breaches. Organizations in healthcare sector must guarantee that encryption is efficient, user friendly, compatible, and extensible where one can add more data when need arise. References. Chaudhry, B. C. , & Venkatraman, H. Strategic alignment: Leveraging information technology for transforming organizations. IBM systems journal, 32(1), 472-484. Noe, R. C. , & Keeler, E. B. Costs and benefits of health information technology.