Health Informatics – Sources Of Health Information Critique

Health Informatics – Sources of Health Information Critique Name Institutional Affiliation Sources of Health Information Critique Information is any stimuli and facts that are provided or studied by someone and provide the answer to a certain kind of question or uncertainty. Information can be looked at in the perspective of data that is processed, analyzed and presented about something or someone. To understand something unknown, one has to source and study the information pertaining to what they want to understand. It is thus through information that all the knowledge is acquired. The information can take many different forms. The mode in which the information is collected, its purpose and how it is stored for future reference differs giving rise to different types of information. Health information is a type of information that helps the medical staff to understand, analyze and make conclusions about the health of their patients to facilitate the treatment process (Bonevski, Randell, Paul, Chapman, Twyman, Bryant, & Hughes, 2014). Health information also refers to the medical advice and other medical related information sources that are concerned with the health of the general public. Health, being a sensitive sector in the society, the information that is available in relation to health is thus vital for the well-being of the public. Health informatics has greatly evolved due to the ever-advancing innovations in the information sector, making information easily and readily available to almost anyone, anywhere in the world (Sherwood, & Zomorodi, 2014). The advent of the internet is, for instance, one of the greatest milestones the health information sector has undergone making it accessible to everyone who has access to the internet in any corner of the world (Burwell, 2015). However, the availability of information has posed a major challenge to the credibility and integrity of the information that is available to the general public. Health information has thus been distorted and varied until the correct and credible information becomes rare to find hence unreliable. Health informatics credibility has however been maintained in some selected credible and reliable sources which contain the medically certified information. Health organizations, both governmental and non-governmental have dedicated a lot of time and resources to help in keeping and maintaining the integrity of the health information. WHO which is the United Nations organizations that is tasked to promote, provide, monitor, research, and maintain good health conditions throughout the world and provision of credible and reliable health information is at the heart of this organization. The nurse is a very important person in the process of improving the health literacy of patients. Having a direct relationship with the patients and for a long time, a nurse is a suitable channel for any medical institution to pass down the certified health and medical information to the patients which in turn increases the literacy of the patients and the society at large. The nurse’s role in improving the health literacy of patients is passing the information that they have acquired through their training down to the patients which they interact with in various health institutions. For instance, a nurse working in the department of public health in a medical institution should advise the patients that visit the institution on the medically certified public health practices and measures that they should take in case of any public health issue within their surroundings. The nursing department of an institution should organize seminars and training sessions for educating the patients and the public on critical health issues. The nurses should give their patients full information concerning the diseases they are suffering from. The information should be correct and up-to-date to ensure that the information is reliable and credible to keep the health of the patients in good condition. Preventive measures of the patient’s conditions and treatment process that was used should be explained to help patients understand what caused their condition and what process was used to treat the condition and why. There are several ways in which the patients access health information regarding their conditions or other people’s conditions. This has been made possible by the advancements and the increased use of the internet. Information is available to anyone at any time across the world. On the internet, there are several ways that the health information is conveyed to the readers. Blogs involve a written post which contains information on a specific topic in health. For instance, a blog in say Wall Street Journal can contain information involving nutrition. Here the blog will major in nutrition and give advice on the best practices when it comes to the nutrition of a patient. However, this information is not formal and should not be relied on for the ultimate health of the patient. Social media is the other rich source of health information. This information is given by individuals who are informed in the medical field. This is the most used and sure way of reaching the target group of people because of the increased number of users of the various social media platforms (Prince, Comas-Herrera, Knapp, Guerchet, & Karagiannidou, 2016). Medical institution and organizations have organized online campaigns are social media like Facebook and Twitter to educate the public on various emerging and developing issues in the world of health. This has created awareness to the general public making it possible for the control of some of the pandemics like malaria and cancer. Web sites are another very resourceful source of information to patients across the world via the internet. Some websites, especially those that are owned by medical institution provide the patients with crucial information about their health. The websites have a personalized information database portal that contains individual patient’s health information that is sourced out of the hospitals. The information on the portals concerning the health of an individual is confidential and should only be available and accessible by the patient. With this portal, patients can monitor the progress and trends in their health making it easy for diagnosis and treatment. Technology has made it pos...