HealthCare Provider and IT

IT is very important to health care in today's society. IT improves the quality, safety, and efficiency of health care. The important thing to note is not all health cares have adopted IT into their investments. Although, it is very important for more and more health care companies to adapt to using IT because it will help them in the long run to be able to run a more efficient company. The healthcare provider i chose to research is MedPac. They use IT in various different ways to be more efficient to their customers and employees.

Medpac allows the company to collect, store, retrieve, and transfer information electronically. Medpac uses computerized provider order entry aka CPOE which can minimize handwriting or other communication
errors by having physicians or other providers enter orders into a computer system. This can also apply only to prescription drugs, or may also include additional physician orders such as x-rays, images, consultations, and transfers. Also Medpac uses electronic health records  aka EHR and most commonly known
as electronic medical records, automated medical records, and computer-based patient records. Multiple definitions exist depending on the constellation of functions that are included. They can be used simply as a passive tool to store patient information or can include multiple decision support functions such as individualized patient reminders and prescribing alerts.

Another type of IT that Medpac uses is Bar coding. Bar coding in a health care
environment is similar to bar-code scanning in other environments. They use an optical scanner to
electronically capture information encoded on a product. Initially, it will be used for medication. For example it can match drugs to certain patients by using bar codes on the medication and the patients arm bands they are given in hospitals or clinics.

Another cool type of IT that Medpac uses that i found very interesting was Radio frequency identification aka RFID. This technology tracks patients throughout the hospital and links lab and medication tracking through a wireless communications system. It is not fully developed yet and use less frequent but i can be an alternative to bar coding. Medpac also uses automated dispensing machines which dispenses the correct dose of medicine for whatever patient so they do not accidentally give them a wrong medication or wrong dose. Medpac also uses Clinical decision support system aka CDSS. CDSS
provides physicians and nurses with real-time diagnostic and treatment recommendations in an instant. This can be things like simple alerts and prescription drug interaction warnings to full clinical pathways and protocols. This is very important IT to doctors and is becoming more and more popular.

As you can see, Medpac uses IT to their advantage and has tons more IT that i have not even mentioned. IT is very important to adopting many clinical health IT applications because it is the belief that they improve the quality of patient care. Also it provides doctors and nurses and patients with instant information and also allows them to stay organized and run more cleanly and efficiently as a business. It is very important because  quality health care relies on physicians, nurses, patients and their families, and others having the right information at the right time and using it to make the right decisions that do not cause problems.

Increasing Returns

Increasing returns is the economic law that governs modern knowledge based businesses such as software. The user has to invest a large amount of effort to learn to use a technology and then does not want to change when change might be needed or at the request of the users. For example, take the manufacturing of automobiles. They are usually standard made with three pedals from left to right that include the accelerator, brake and clutch. When you learn to drive one car, essentially you can now learn to drive all cars. Now suppose that someone figures out a more efficient arrangement of the three pedals and changes the order they are aligned in the car. Would you want to drive such a car or go back to the standard made car? It is highly likely that you will crash in your first emergency situation because your brain will be used to the standard alignment of the pedals. 

Most simply put, increasing returns refers to the notion that the greater the size of the network, the greater the advantage of each participant in the network. Each participant brings their own value to the overall network. The more variables you have for your product, the better profit you will make off of your product. Take Fax Machines for example, adding one fax machine will create x in return, however adding 2 fax machines means that they can communicate and therefore increase return higher than would be possible by just 1 fax machine, and marginal returns would be even higher for adding even more fax machines.  

Increasing returns are most commonly seen in the technological market. A company may have software already developed and by adding a couple new things can greatly enhance the value of that software. The latest example of this is the new I-Phone 5 that just came out. The IP-5 is lighter in weight compared to the IP-4S by an ounce. The screen size is taller at 4 inches instead of 3.5. The reviewers agreed that the bigger screen is better for viewing documents and movies and Web surfing. Apple boasted that the new IP-5 can now shoot pictures in low light unlike the IP-4S. The rear-facing camera also got an upgrade to 1.2 megapixels.The battery life has improved to 14 hours in a day with heavy usage of LTE, GPS and WiFi. The shocker is that the new phone is the same price as the IP-4S, but where they make their money and increase returns is, the new IP-5 will now require the user to buy a new adapter that costs 29 dollars. The old adapters that work on the IP-4S, IPads, mac books, iPods, etc will not work on the new IP-5. If you have a few accessories, you could easily pay $150 extra just in adapters for a $200 phone.

The bottom line to this example is Apple has taken an already great product and made it better, overall. By adding these new features, you have now attracted new users to buy the phone, as well as your previous customers but at the same time all users will have to fork out more money for the adapters. The company is a dominant force in the consumer electronics industry and continues to get further and further ahead with increasing returns, but it still hasn't established a firm grip in global mobile market share. 

IT and Strategic Value

Having IT that is up-to-date with the rest of the world we are constantly competing with is very important. Understanding the role IT plays in the business will be important in establishing proper scope, obtaining support for initiatives and delivering the greatest value to the organization at hand.  IT is very important in all countries weather it is in the very intermediate stages, or the more advanced stages. If companies are not up to date with current IT, then they will be at a very big disadvantage in business competition. Having more powerful, up-to-date information systems allow for better economic competition among the market. There are many advantages to having these information systems that run efficiently for your business. You can store, retrieve, transmit, and manipulate data more efficiently.

Strategic value is about competitive, pricing, cost, product, or market differentiation. Strategic value is not the same as a fair market value, where a hypothetical buyer and seller have access to all relevant data. Most importantly, strategic value have special hidden features that give buyers a quicker, less costly, and lower risk way to achieve their business goals. For example, entering a new market is a way to capitalize on strategic value. If you have a good understanding of your clients business and product line, you can analyze the market for competitors who could beneficially expand by acquiring the client. An easy example to see this put into action would be, a Midwestern company looking to expand to the East Coast could buy a competitor already established there, or a company hoping to expand its sales of machine parts to a new set of customers could acquire a company that sells an unrelated part to the same customers.

When IT "is the value chain", a good example to analyze is Amazon and Google. The closer IT is to the product or service, the more strategic its value will be to the organization. If there was no information technology, what exactly would their product consist of? Amazon is very efficient with the capabilities they have around fulfilling customers wants, needs, and orders. They have developed a lot of manual picking and packing and are very efficient with this process. The most important aspect of this to note is, if they were not able to reach their customers through IT, they would have no advantage over these other companies.  

When IT "is part of the value chain", a good example to analyze would be Target. The company has developed a new way to target their customers with marketing strategic values. They use a technique called predictive analytic aimed at their customers to predict their buying habits in the future based off of what they have bought in the past. Using this information, they will send out coupons to their current customers, as well as try and attract new customers. This technique is very good for capturing customers attention and retaining their business over a long span of time. 

Data mining companies have also seen a huge increase in demand for their services. They use certain information gathering technologies which allows other companies to access their data. The type of information these companies want are shopping trends, age, income, etc. An example of using data mining would be to analyze that when men bought diapers on Thursdays and Saturdays, they also tended to buy beer. On the other hand, they only bought a few items on these Thursdays. The retailer concluded that they purchased the beer, which meant to have it available for the upcoming weekend. The grocery chain could also use this newly discovered information in various ways to increase revenue for their chain. For example, they could move the beer display closer to the diaper display. And they could make sure beer and diapers were sold at full price on Thursdays because they would be expecting this business.

Knowledge Economy V. Physical Economy

Knowledge economy is an economy where growth is dependent on the quality, quantity, and accessibility of information available instead of actual production. It focuses on the production of knowledge in economic straints.With knowledge economy, knowledge is the main driver of growth and wealth, as well as creation of employment. For example, this economy is one that focus shifts from being based on manufacturing services to actual mental skills of information and knowledge people retain. There is no way to actually see the value of this economy because it is knowledge and not physical production.

On the other hand, a physical economy is one that deals with things that are actually touchable and can be physically seen. Physical economy deals with goods, services, and resources that you can see exist in a tangible location. People have to actually work with their hands to see production and the value in a physical economy is seen mush easier.When you sell a product, it changes hands from the seller to the buyer. Although, in a knowledge economy, you may buy some software from Microsoft and now you own the rights to the software, the company Microsoft still primarily owns the software.

Examples of knowledge economy can be people having acquired certain skill sets over time that they are able to apply to products or services.This can include things like the research behind the products being made, technical support, and consultation. Examples of a physical economy are machines used by people created with knowledge economy, or computers used and the software which was created by knowledge economy. With a physical economy, machines and computers will eventually break down or need to be replaced, but with knowledge economy you will always have the knowledge and skill sets needed and the only thing that can happen is the knowledge can become outdated. 

There is a rise in the knowledge economy that is becoming more intense and it is being driven by the new and ever so increasing pace of the information technology revolution, and the increasing pace of technological change we see everyday. The increasing knowledge intensity that we are seeing involves both the individual goods and services produced, as well as the growing importance of those good and services in our economy today. To some companies, a knowledge based economy is the secret to their success and many wish to keep it secret because they will have an advantage other companies and by sharing the information, they would lose this competitive edge. A knowledge economy is becoming more important because in some aspects it is different then the physical industrial economy we have known for over 200 years now.We are able to have a more competitive economy full of products, and constantly see evolving products becoming better and better.

Most of the time, the knowledge economy and the physical economy cross over each other because it takes the knowledge to be able to create the software for these computers, knowledge to create these databases we use today, knowledge to design buildings and programs we use, but it takes the physcial economy to actually see these things being made and produced, and to have the hands on man power to create the goods. Although, it takes both the knowledge economy and the physical economy for things to be produced and made. Without the knowledge, you wont know how to  use the machines or computers to create products, and without the physical economy, you wont be able to use the devices to create the products. For example, it is like building a house. You need the knowledge to create the blue prints and choose the right tools to use, and you need the physical ability to work with the tools to build the house. Without the proper knowledge of how to build the house, you will have no foundation to start building. Without the knowledge that has been possessed by people of our world today, there would be no way to create all the products and innovations that have been created.