Health Informatics is the merging of information science and health
care. It deals mainly with the use computers, mobile devices, fax
machines, and other resources to maximize the data collection, storage
and retrieval for purposeful information. The information may be used
for health and biomedicine. The health informatics tools not only use
electronic devices, the institution that will be employing this technology
will be guided by standard clinical guidelines, medical terminologies
like International Classification for Diseases (ICD10) and Systematized
Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED), and cost effective yet advanced
communications systems available like Skype. The emerging use of new
technologies had brought about advances in which data and records are
shared with other fields or areas that support and enhance patient
care, medical history, previous medical exam reports, x-ray and
laboratory test results, doctors' diagnoses, and a list of past
treatment plans. This information is very crucial to providing quality
healthcare. All forms must be completed, identified, and signed by
respective personnel prior to the entry of these information.

Before I became a Nurse, I worked mainly with financial institutions from
retail banking, commercial banking and consumer loans. I had the
privilege to be pulled out from the monotony on normal assignment as
management trainee to conduct test on the company system whether for
random quality assurance or test environment prior to implementation.
My first job as a loan staff under retail banking group is to re-price,
release and renew loans manually. At first it was very tedious and I
felt like its taking forever to finish one account. I never thought
that would be very helpful later when I was tasked to test the loans
module on “Systematics” for Far East Bank and Trust Company, “i-loans”
and “i-collect” for Associates Finance, and New Application System
(NAS) and Computer Assisted Collection System (CACS) for the collection
module under “Systematics” for CitiFinancial Corporation. While working
on my second degree, I accepted an outsource project abroad. I was
assigned to plan the entire project, design the requirements as
specified by the clients, write the technical report, modify errors,
integrate necessary adjustments and conduct/evaluate user testing prior
to implementation of the website. I conducted quality assurance tests,
reviewed and coordinated design and development team to integrate the whole project’s graphics, content, capacity, search engine optimization and user interface.

My work with a medical tourism facilitator gave me a real drive what
health informatics is all about. I worked as a Patient Medical Trip
Case Manager and I spent most of the time online to coordinate with the
hospitals abroad to ensure accuracy, clarify diagnoses, professional
fees, accommodation and obtain any supplementary information needed to
update a patient's file. I sent clients from the United States to the
other parts of the world like India, Korea, Turkey, Mexico and Costa
Rica. Clients mostly had no insurance and were seeking equally
outstanding medical procedures abroad. My clients' profile include
bariatric; cosmetic;
cyber-knife; organ transplant; Ortho related like pectus excavatum, hip
replacement and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL); Fertility related
like Intro-Vitro Fertilization, gestational surrogacy and among others.
I also assisted in other areas of the business like marketing, lead
management systems, business reporting and customer experience
improvements. All done online, so the use of SugarCRM, SalesForce,
Dropbox, Skype, Webinars, video conferences made everything possible.

Now, with regards to critical thinking I would never appreciate my job if
becoming a nurse was never done on the clinical setting first. I would
rather put my fingers next to pulse point than clicking a mouse. I
would never know how to teach clients abroad regarding their pre and
post treatment if I haven’t done this in a hospital ward, in a dialysis
clinic or in a community setting. I would rather run to a patient who
eventually “yawns” to check his blood pressure during dialysis than
merely escalating problems to the attending physicians overseas.
Nursing intervention with adequate intelligence and compassion were
given more weight without compromising anything.

In my own opinion, health informatics is not a branch of specialization but
rather part of the skills of a qualified health professional to cope up
with today’s advanced technology