Activity 1b

Discuss the impact on an area of life without databases.

Healthcare sector.
Why are databases essential for the healthcare sector?
Medical databases serve a critical function in healthcare including the areas such as,

 Patient care
 Administration
 Management
 Research
 Education
The quality as well as the breadth of information collected within these databases could vary
tremendously between small institutions to national boundaries.
The field of healthcare could be advanced substantially by the development of comprehensive and
accurate databases. This accuracy and comprehensiveness of data are vitally important for a variety of
purposes. Such as,

 Examining diagnostic results

 Local / Regional / National assessments within the healthcare system (outpatient conditions,
inpatient hospital events.)
 Administrative purposes such as assessment of international differences in the healthcare and
disease sector.
 And also the accuracy of the data would simply be needed to check the attendance of the staff.
(Doctors, nurses and directors etc.)
 Doctors and all the other staff can take use of queries & reports so that they can sort out all
information according to their needs and also straight away print reports to speed up their daily
hectic work.
To summarize the above points,

 Databases are efficient.

 Exchange of information flow.
 Monitoring and improving the value of healthcare.
 Assessing the quality of healthcare.
 Tracking healthcare usage.
The most commonly used types of databases in healthcare sector.
In the early days, and still in some undeveloped countries, managing databases were done in paper. All of
the processes were and is written on paper accordingly. (Attendance, medicine prescriptions, and even all
patient records).
But day by day the healthcare sector broadens and technology is integrated to all the systems in a vast
manner. Therefore about 90 % of the healthcare systems are computerized into electronic databases. The
usage of electronic databases are vast when compared with manual databases as electronic databases are
accurate since data redundancy is checked. Specific data could be encrypted so that only a specific group
of people can go through it using some sort of password so that work could be pretty much confidential.
The most common electronic databases used are as follows

 EHR ( Electronic Health Records )

This database is used to enter routine clinical and laboratory data as a record of patient’s care. The EHR is
a prime example of an OLTP (Online Transaction Processing database).
Speed is key in the healthcare industry therefore databases like such are extremely essential.

 Patient identification
 Human Resource management
 Billing and payment processing
 Lab systems
An example for an EHR is provided below.

Now, the main point of this activity could be discussed as we have a rough idea about what healthcare
databases are. What would happen if there were no databases used in the healthcare sector?
In my opinion, the management of the total healthcare system is revolving around a set of database
systems. Absence of these databases to take control of the management would be disastrous. We can
discuss about this thoroughly by simply taking daily examples.
Efficiency?

 Every time a patient visits a medical institution, a lot of information is collected. Where the
patients requires seeing many different procedures, everything should be clearly recorded do that
the diagnosis could be made accurately and the information could be kept safe. If there were no
databases, even doctors could lose track of the patient because they have to treat and serve many
patients simultaneously to be efficient. Data could be everywhere and unorganized. This could
even put the life of the patient at stake. It could possibly be super dangerous to the patient
because if the diagnosis was made inaccurately, steps taken to treat the patient will be inaccurate.
  Data could be everywhere and all over the place. This could possibly lead to data manipulation.
 There can be instances where a patient needs services from different hospitals and without
databases, a system cannot be developed to exchange information. In a hospital, the exchange of
healthcare data anytime when there is a requirement is essential.
 Without databases, human resource management is nearly impossible. At least a manual database
is needed to record the activities of employee. Calculating payments for all the employees will
not work as there are no past or present records to be analysed.
 Patients cannot expect better healthcare, better health, improved efficiency, lower costs and better
clinical decision making with the absence of databases.
 The ability to track healthcare usage for diseases like influenza, polio, measles etc. will be
impossible without databases. Storing records to track the improvement of invention of cures to
these diseases are very important. But without databases, it’s non-viable.
 Simply everything is impractical without databases in the healthcare industry.

So with the discussion above, we can come into a conclusion that a well-designed Healthcare database
system is important for day to day running of the healthcare sector. The proper technology will make it
possible for the healthcare providers to collect pertinent information that will improve the quality of the
care they provide.