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Practitioner’s guide to health informatics
Braunstein M., Springer International Publishing, New York, NY, 2015. 162 pp. Type: Book (978-3-319176-61-1)
Date Reviewed: Jun 9 2016

Information systems play an important role in optimizing processes in many industries by facilitating the exchange and analysis of data. It is the book’s premise that the same level of optimization and effectiveness could be achieved in the healthcare sector.

Information systems in the healthcare sector extend to the following three main aspects: data gathering through electronic healthcare record systems, data exchange through standards, and security. Practitioner’s guide to health informatics explains these topics by pointing out the political aspects of the implementation as well as an overview of the technical implications.

The first of the three aspects, electronic health records (EHR), is handled in the first part of the book. Industrialized countries are increasingly concerned about the efficiency of their healthcare systems. One of the main reasons for this concern is due to demographic development. As life expectancy increases, the need for healthcare and nursing services has exploded, in part because of the proliferation of age- and lifestyle-related chronic diseases. Unfortunately, not all of the information needed for the successful treatment of patients is available to providers in a consistent format. Moreover, this lack of information drives coordination costs among providers and patients, leads to duplicated examinations, and ultimately increases overall costs of a treatment while lessening its effectiveness. There is a lot to be gained from the gathering and sharing of patient health information, especially when it comes to chronically ill patients who are being handled through different providers.

Another issue that needs to be taken seriously, according to the second part of the book, is system interoperability. We need interconnection among different relevant providers--hospitals, general practitioners, specialists, nursing homes, and so on--and their patients in order to exchange critical information about treatments, examination results, and medication plans.

In the last part of the book, the incorporation of patient-generated data is analyzed; current proposals aim at a holistic approach to patient care and toward reaching new conclusions on the effectiveness of medical treatments, as well as new knowledge on disease causes and interdependencies based on big data analysis. The author correctly points out that confidentiality plays a critical role in the design and later adoption of healthcare information systems on both the provider and patient sides.

This book is appropriate for all those interested in healthcare information systems. It is specifically written for physicians, as a quick overview of the legal and political landscape of health informatics systems as implemented in the US. Non-US readers might find the book interesting as a means of comparing the developments in this country with the developments in other parts of the world.

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Reviewer:  Carla Sánchez Aguilar Review #: CR144489 (1608-0572)
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