Brunner B K
University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee.
Top Health Inf Manage. 1993 Aug;14(1):54-61.
This article has examined the impact that telecommunications technologies may have on the way in which health care services are delivered. A number of scenarios of how that might occur were discussed. Some of these scenarios are already being realized. Telemedicine, for instance, is being used in certain geographic regions of the United States. Various community health information networks are in the developmental stages or at varying degrees of operability. Two such networks in Colorado and Wisconsin were offered as examples. The impact of these developments on confidentiality and security of patient information, issues central to the responsibilities of health information managers, has been discussed. These technological advancements will have consequences for health information managers in other ways, too. The types of tasks that are performed and how those tasks are performed related to storing and retrieving information will be different in the future. In the transition period, blurring of job functions may occur as different types of practitioners strive to carve their niche in the electronic environment. For instance, as electronic patient records are linked to bibliographic databases of medical literature, where do the responsibilities of health information managers end and medical librarians begin? The best way to ensure a position on the health care team of the future is to recognize the opportunities provided by this dynamic period in health care.
本文探讨了电信技术可能对医疗服务提供方式产生的影响。文中讨论了多种可能出现这种影响的情形。其中一些情形已经在成为现实。例如，远程医疗在美国的某些地理区域正在得到应用。各种社区健康信息网络正处于发展阶段或具备不同程度的可操作性。科罗拉多州和威斯康星州的两个此类网络被作为例子列举。这些发展对患者信息的保密性和安全性的影响——这是健康信息管理人员职责的核心问题——已经得到了讨论。这些技术进步也将在其他方面给健康信息管理人员带来影响。未来，执行的任务类型以及与存储和检索信息相关的任务执行方式将会有所不同。在过渡时期，随着不同类型的从业者努力在电子环境中找到自己的定位，工作职责可能会变得模糊。例如，当电子病历与医学文献书目数据库相链接时，健康信息管理人员的职责在哪里结束，医学图书馆员的职责又从哪里开始？确保在未来医疗团队中占据一席之地的最佳方法，是认识到这个医疗领域动态发展时期所带来的机遇。
