Digital Infrastructure for the Learning Health System, Essay Example

E-health refers to the deployment of information services and technology tools in order to convey data and information via communication technologies—also known as ICTs—that retain the capacity to enhance the diagnosis, treatment, prevention, management, and monitoring within the delivery of healthcare services. DNP leaders are charged with the responsibility to integrate and streamline this technology vis-à-vis nursing infomatics in addition to other technologies that enable the community at large to benefit from them as a result. Data and information sharing between healthcare providers and patients, hospitals, medical institutions, and the community at large benefits from e-health as a result (Shuffitt & Effkin, 2012). Nures who have a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree is critical in the capacity of healthcare providers to enhance the design of Health Information Technology (HIT), in addition to appropriating more effective delivery of healthcare via the integration and streamlining of improved health information technology and understanding how electronic health has transformed the delivery of care. A firm comprehension of analytical techniques and informatics principles is vital for the efficacy of e-health, which is why DNP programs must integrate courses that provide students with more than just cursory knowledge and understanding of nursing infomatics. The essentials for advanced nursing practices incorporate health informatics as they relate to patient care, yet there remains a lack of emphasis placed on HIT. Such a cursory treatment of HIT poses problems in the future due to the fact that HIT systems are still in their nascent stages and thus continue to be quite fragmented (Grossman & McGinnis, 2010). Nonetheless, there have been evidence-based e-health programs that developed in order to spread information on certain maladies such as diabetes that can be managed through web-based interventions and tutorials. Web-based interventions include virtual nurses that are tailored to patients on an idiosyncratic basis. DNPs can develop web-based interventions in order to improve knowledge on medical conditions and decrease health disparities and outcomes for certain demographic groups that lack access to educative tools and/or knowledge for the management of certain conditions.

References

Grossman, C., & McGinnis, J. (2010). Digital infrastructure for the learning health system: The Foundation for Continuous Improvement in Health and Health Care. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Shuffitt, J. & Effken, J. (June 2012) Threading Informatics throughout Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Curricula. Online Journal of Nursing Informatics (OJNI), 16 (2).