The health information technology environment is rapidly changing as more innovative health IT is adopted to improve the best practice and quality of healthcare services. Cost-effective is one of the significant objectives in the creation of quality healthcare by integrating all aspects of healthcare delivery. Standards of operating the healthcare system are essential in achieving interoperability that enables the delivery of cost-effective and quality healthcare services. This paper focuses on the standards and standard development process in health informatics, including data standardization and standard-setting organizations.
Data Standardization
Data standardization is a practice that involves transforming data into a standard format that enables healthcare research, large-scale analytics, and the distribution of sophisticated methodologies and tools. Data collected in healthcare can be stored in different forms using different information models and database systems (Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics, 2019). The importance of data standardization includes designing user interfaces using terminologies to help facilitate data entry ad storage of healthcare data at the point of care. The ability of interface terminology to cover clinicians' preferred terms through relations of synonyms and conception terms helps to enhance the user interface in HER's. Another importance of data standardization is supporting data retrieval and data exchange. The use of standardized terminologies ensures that data is encoded based on unique concept identities or alphanumeric codes preventing typing errors. Coded data also enhances the processes of data retrieval and transfer. Data standardization also helps in monitoring the quality of care. It is easy to track coded clinical data by joining data sources. The coding of data enables clinicians to exam gaps in the current practices and best practices, and patient outcomes based on the healthcare organization's practice patterns, policy, and staffing ratios. The quality monitoring activities can be used to improve the organization's health delivery quality by making changes where necessary. Also, clinical researchers can benefit from data standardization by accessing complete coded data across the care field, which helps in improving the discovery of further knowledge that can enhance the quality of healthcare delivery.
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The benefits of standards in healthcare delivery include encouraging collaboration and knowledge sharing bringing experts from different communities together, and allowing stakeholders to define standards that improve healthcare quality. Standards facilitate innovation and product development by reducing duplication and enabling small organizations to participate in product development. Standards play a critical role in increasing the healthcare industry's stability, accelerating market availability for products, and growing healthcare options for patients (Standards Coordinating Body, 2019). Another benefit of standards is reducing costs to manufactures and patients. The standardization of equipment, methodologies, and testing protocols enables stakeholders in the healthcare industry to streamline their business processes, creating cost-effective that is passed on to patients. Standards also signify the legitimacy of healthcare processes, which assures patients of the best practice and high-quality healthcare provision.
In nursing, there are data standard classifications that are used to support the nursing practice by conforming to the development standards terminology. Some of them include the Clinical Care Classification (CCC). The CCC classifies nursing diagnosis and intervention practices to support the nursing documentation process. CCC incorporates patient healthcare patterns in terms of functional, physiological, psychological, and behavioral (Nelson & Staggers, 2018). The International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP) is also a standard classification that is designed to characterize nursing diagnosis, interventions, and outcomes y capturing the nursing care delivery. Another standardized nursing classification is the Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC), which is an intervention research-based standardized classification describing activities performed by nurses directly or indirectly.
Standards-Setting Organizations
Standards-Setting Organizations (SSO) are organizations that focus on developing, publishing, or disseminating technical standards by the use of a consensus-based standard development procedure. The source of standards and the SSOs include the technology-related standards in health informatics, standards that are generally related to healthcare, and the standards that are specific to health informatics (Nelson & Staggers, 2018). SSOs impacting health information technology include the Accredited Standards Committee (ASC), which creates electronic based data interchange that is used to facilitate business transactions electronic-based interchange. The ASC has an X12N Insurance Subcommittee that develops ASC X12 Standards components for the insurance industry, including those in healthcare insurance. American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is another SSO, which advocates for U.S. standards to be adopted internationally. ANSI in health IT standards focuses on communication establishment among the standard development organizations related to Health IT.
The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) International is an SSO that creates international standards related to healthcare informatics architecture, storage, content, security, functionality, the confidentiality of healthcare information. Health Level Seven (HL7) International is another SSO. HL7 includes healthcare professions and information scientists who collaborate to provide electronic health information frameworks and standards for sharing, exchange, integration, and retrieval of EHI capable of offering clinical practice, healthcare delivery, management, and evaluation of health services support (AMIA, 2019). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Standards Association is an SSO dedicated to developing standards in advancing technology in a broad range of sectors (EMB, 2019). IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine (T-ITB) focuses on standards in biomedical and health application devices. Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) International is an SSO initiative by the healthcare industry and professionals that help in improving information sharing in healthcare computer systems. IHE promotes and coordinates the use of established Health IT standards, such as DICOM and HL7, to enhance optimal patient care (Nelson & Staggers, 2018). The International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which has 162 national standards bodies that work together to develop international standards. The ISO has been able to establish more than 154 Health IT standards. Other SSOs that engage in Health IT standard development include National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP), Working Group for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI), and National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC).
References
AMIA. (2019). Standards Development Organization . Retrieved from https://www.amia.org/news-publications/standards-standard/standards-development-organization
EMB. (2019). About the BHI Technical Committee . Retrieved from https://tc-bhi.embs.org/
Nelson, R., & Staggers, N. (2018). Health Informatics: An Interprofessional Approach (2 nd Ed) . St. Louis, Missouri; Elsevier Inc.
Standards Coordinating Body. (2019). Standard Developing Organizations & Other Organizations Developing Standards . Retrieved from https://www.standardscoordinatingbody.org/sdos#sdos
Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics. (2019). Data Standardization . Retrieved from https://ohdsi.org/data-standardization/
