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USE OF INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY.
Introduction
In 1969, when the Internet was known as the Arpanet and the
World Wide Web was nothing more than a glint in a creative student's mind,
the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality funded its first project in
medical informatics.1 Since then, the Agency has continued to support
research and development projects in the use of information technology to
improve health care, awarding $250 million dollars to fund more than 150
projects in medical informatics. Today, the Agency is still blazing this
technology trail with projects that seek to develop the knowledge and tools
needed to improve the quality of care in the U.S. health care system.
Background
In 1998, the Committee on the Quality of Health Care in America,
established within the Institute of Medicine (IOM), was asked to identify
strategies for improving the quality of health care in the United States. As
part of this effort, the committee published a seminal report in March
2001, crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century,
which focused on issues relating to health care quality in this country. The
committee concluded that the U.S. health care system did not consistently
deliver the type of high-quality care that Americans expect and deserve. The
report includes a framework and strategy for redesigning the health care
system to facilitate the delivery of high-quality care. One of the key findings
was that information and communication technology (IT) is integral to
achieving substantial quality improvement. More specifically, the report
recommended the use of IT to improve access to information and support
evidence-based decision making. The committee called for a national
commitment to building an information infrastructure to support health care
delivery, consumer health, quality measurement and improvement, public
accountability, clinical and health services research, and clinical education.
STAKEHOLDER INTEGRATION.
Stakeholder integration is another important objective of
information technology. Using global 24/7 interconnectivity, a customer
service call originating in Des Moines, Iowa, ends up in a call center in
Manila, Philippines, where a service agent could look up the relevant
information on severs based in corporate headquarters in Dallas, Texas, or in
Frankfurt, Germany.
PROCESS IMPROVEMENT.
Communication needs will continue to grow; the functions of email, instant messaging, Weblogs, and wireless communications will improve
as the demands of informational society increase so to fulfill the thirst
Information Technology is needed.
Information Technology deals and has jobs related to
electronic and software of computers to store, convert, process, protect,
retrieve securely, and transmit information. In recent days this technology
and the professionals in this field have encompassed every aspect of
technology and computing. It has achieved more recognition today than in
the past.
The IT professionals as they are referred as perform various
duties, which range from the application of installation to even designing
some computer networks of a complex nature.
Along with these, some databases applications are a part of
their job profiles. Some also perform management of data, engineering,
networking, design of software and databases, then engineering of hardware
and even system administration and management too.
Information Technology asks the professionals to be in
consultation with the top order management members to get help in
determining the business goals and also the technical goals.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.
STUDYING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN ORGANIZATIONS:
RESEARCH APPROACHES
In contrast to the steady and rapid advances in semiconductor
technology, information storage, networking, and applications, the
interaction of IT with various elements of society is more complex. Although
IT performance in many cases improves exponentially, the utility to users in
many cases improves more slowly (Chandra et al. 2000). For example, a
doubling of computer processing speeds may bring only small improvements
in the most widely used applications, such as word processing or
spreadsheets. Furthermore, although it is common to talk about the "impact"
or "effect" of IT or the Internetimplying a one-way influencethe
interaction of IT with society is multidirectional and multidimensional. Over
the past two decades, many studies have explored how organizations use IT.
Cumulatively, these studies have found that a simple model of IT
leading to social and organizational effects does not hold (Kling 2000).
Instead, IT is developed and used in a social context in which organizations
and individuals shape the technology and the way it is used. The
implementation of IT is an ongoing social process that involves changes in
people's roles and in organizational procedures. Incentives and trust are
important factors in the success of IT implementation. The following sections
examine the effects of IT on the economy and the general public.
IT APPLICATIONS IN BUSINESS
Businesses use IT in many different ways. Some IT applications
automate a variety of basic business activities, from production control
systems in manufacturing to word processing and financial calculations in
office work. Other applications involve databases and information retrieval
that support management, customer service, logistics, product design,
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The days of large file rooms, rows of filing cabinets and the mailing
of documents is fading fast. Today, most companies store digital versions of
documents on servers and storage devices. These documents become
instantly available to everyone in the company, regardless of their
geographical location.
MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS.
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DATA COLLECTION.
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FINDINGS.
SIGNIFICANCE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY.
possible the rapid sequencing of the human genome, which in turn has
resulted in unprecedented expansion of genomic databases (Sinclair 1999).
In many scientific fields, data increasingly are collected in digital form, which
facilitates analysis, storage, and dissemination. For example, seismic data
used to measure earthquakes were once recorded on paper or film but now
are usually recorded digitally, making it possible for scientists around the
world to analyze the data quickly.
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CONCLUSION.
IT continues to develop rapidly as the key underlying technologies of
semiconductors, disk drives, and network communications improve at
exponential rates. Constant improvements in the underlying technologies
make possible new IT applications that affect all areas of society, including
the economy, households, government, and the R&D enterprise.
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RECOMMENDATION.
IT AND INNOVATION
In addition to its interactions with R&D, IT influences several other
elements of the innovation process, including the market environment for
and the organization of innovation. The Council of Economic Advisers (2001)
notes that the U.S. economy in the late 1990s was characterized by the high
rate of technological innovation and by the central role of IT. The council
observes that innovation in the "new" economy appears to have changed in
several ways, including the intense competition and positive feedback that
drive innovation, the mechanisms for financing innovation, the sources of
R&D, and the innovation process itself. IT is involved in each of these
changes, and many of the changes are most visible in the IT sector.
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BIBLOGRAPHY.
Adelman, C. 2000. A Parallel Postsecondary Universe: The Certification
System in Information Technology. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of
Education.
Alberts, D.S., and D.S. Papp, eds. 1997. The Information Age: An Anthology
on Its Impact and Consequences. Washington, DC: National Defense
University.
Allen, T., and M.S. Morton, eds. 1994. Information Technology and the
Corporation of the 1990s. New York: Oxford University Press.
Alpar, P., and M. Kim. 1991. "A Microeconomic Approach to the Measurement
of Information Technology Value." Journal of Management Information
Systems 7(2): 5569.
Ante, S.E., with A. Borrus and R.D. Hof. 2001. "In Search of the Net's Next Big
Thing." Business Week (March 26): 141.
Atkinson, R.D., and R.H. Court. 1998. The New Economy Index:
Understanding America's Economic Transformation. Washington, DC:
Progressive Policy Institute.
Attewell, P., and J. Rule. 1994. "Computing and Organizations: What We Know
and What We Don't Know." In C. Huff and T. Finholt, eds., Social Issues in
Computing. New York: mcgraw-Hill.
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ANNEXURES.
QUESTIONAIRE.
1. Do Use Information Technology?
Yes
No
No
No
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No
No
No
No
THANK YOU.
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