Other tools such as automated medication dispensing (ADC) systems were found to
mitigate medication errors up to 90% in critical care medical units while retained surgical
item detectors were found to improve the levels of compliance to preventive medical
services and the mitigation of the rates of asthma attacks among patients with pulmonary
and respiratory chronic lung diseases.
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Lupton (2017) posits that patient portals were further found to advance the levels
of patient medication adherence, to improve their awareness regarding individual
underlying chronic conditions, to increase the levels of disease self-management and to
increase overall patient satisfaction. Other HIT tools such as virtual visits and
telemonitoring using telemedicine were found by Lupton (2017) to be as proficient as
face-to-face interactions and care in reference to specific clinical outcomes while patients
with underlying ailments such as hypertension were found to have advanced clinical
outcomes. The overall use of electronic medical records (EMR) led to improved
adherence to protocols, mitigation of medical errors, and mitigation of adverse drug
events and significant drop of related patient mortality.
Diverse studies by Meskó, Drobni, Bényei, Gergely & Győrffy (2017) and Ruiz
Morilla, Sans, Casasa & Giménez (2017) posit that HIT modalities such as electronic
health records (EHR) are essential in the patient history recording, application of decision
support for patient medicines management and for easy retrieval of patient data.
Additional HIT tools such as web based monitoring systems have been found to elevate
the likelihood of medication adherence and patient tailored education regarding patient’s
specific underlying medical conditions and their respective medications. Ruiz Morilla,
Sans, Casasa & Giménez (2017) found that short messaging services (SMS) was effective
when utilized as a communication platform to enhance standardized or tailored medicine
through scheduled reminders hence improving medication adherence. Further studies by
Silva, Rodrigues, de la Torre Díez, López-Coronado & Saleem (2015) found out that
mobile health applications were significantly essential in coordinating personalized
reminders, organization of medical prescriptions, management of patient based
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polypharmacy, infusion of adherence to proper medication taking as part of the
management plan to mitigate chronic infections and diseases and timely data exchange on
medications coupled with proper medication refill orders. Silva et al. (2015) further found
out that HIT wearable devices such as app-linked tools infused with sensors proved
useful when worn by asthmatic patients to warn them of impeding attacks hence leading
to proper management of medicines. For patients with diabetes, contact lenses and other
biosensors such as wearable patches were found by Wernhart, Gahbauer & Haluza (2019)
to be proficient in measuring blood glucose for efficient management of insulin.
