Nursing Informatics: Implementation of Patient Portals

Patient Portals
Name
Institutional Affiliation
Patient Portals
1 Background
The prognosis procedure known as, “Patient Centered Approach” is one of the most significant approaches used by medical institutes in today’s world. This approach requires the patients to be an active part of their treatment procedures. The concept of the ‘patient-centered care’ first arrived on the medical sphere in the year 2001 and since then evolved itself to become one of the most reliable and efficient methods to devise a treatment plan for the patients (Grilo, Dos Santos, Gomes, & Rita, 2017). The concepts include the active participation of patients in their treatment and meeting their individual needs and preferences. The approach makes the patients and their loved one an active part of the treatment leaving the health professionals to deal with clinical methods and introducing less invasive treatment measures. The approach also facilitates inaccurate sharing of information between the patients, relatives, health professionals, and medical research institutes.
From the offset of the patient-centered approach as the preferred prognosis method the ‘information’ its representation and sharing are identified as a critical factor. The field of informatics is all about the collection, storage, and representation of the information. The technical information and communication and the ability of nurses to use these tools are of vital importance for this process. However, the use of technology can also create barriers for the treatments. The presence of information can contribute to ‘dehumanization’ and interfere with the conventional doctor-patient relationships (Grilo, Dos Santos, Gomes, & Rita, 2017). The following figure summarized the way information plays an integral part of the entire treatment process:
Figure 1: Interaction of informatics in the patient-centered approach (Grilo, Dos Santos, Gomes, & Rita, 2017).
One of the ways to reduce the communication gap between patients and doctors resulting from sharing of information is to ask the patients of their opinions, concerns, and limitations regarding a specified clinical approach. The clinical experts or physicians can also use this information to compare their medical knowledge, patient’s individual conditions, and the experience of other patients to devise a reliable treatment approach based on the patient’s preferences (Hanna & Pantanowitz, 2017). The quality of information plays a vital role in this regard as it is observed the higher the quality of the information and its presentation higher will be coordination between the stakeholders of the treatment processes. Thus the accurate, meaningful, and friendly representation information has a critical importance in the clinical decisions and resulting effectiveness. In this research, the benefits of patient portals and their benefits to the patient based care approach is discussed in detail. Moreover, some of the barriers to the adoption of technology are also discussed in this research.
1 Patient Portals or Personal Health Records (Patient Portal)
These records and portals are exclusively designed for the patients and have the ability to ...