Technology-Current Health Trends and Issues
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Technology-Current Health Trends and Issues
At this times we are living in, technological changes have been seen as the key to transformation in all sectors. The healthcare sector is not excluded, as significant technological changes have been seen and is continuing to be viewed in this essential area of our daily lives. This notable change has been due to the efforts of the industry’s players to influence technology in a bid to improve patients’ experience and the flow of work in the health care sector. As such, this paper gives comprehensive information about the technological changes and issues in the healthcare industry.
There are several current technological trends in health care. This change has been given an upper arm in the sector for their efficiency in the delivery of better health services (Spekowius & Wendler, 2006). One of the technological trends is the use of smartphones and applications that are specially developed to support patients and caregivers. This technological advancement has provided the caregivers and the patients with personal monitoring devices that enable them to be aware of their statuses such as blood pressure and sugar levels. Cloud-based health database is another technological trend in health. This has made a significant amount of data to be maintained and be readily available to doctors, nurses and researchers (Mostashari, 2014).
Telehealth is another technological advancement in the healthcare industry. This technological trend has been received gladly as many patients see it as cost effective. The cost effectiveness is because patients do not require visiting a doctor, but the only requirement is to call or chat with the caregiver via multiple platforms (Lubitz & Wickramasinghe, 2006). This has significantly improved the interaction of patients and their respective physicians. The fourth technological trend is the three dimensions printing that will influence the manufacturing of healthcare equipment such as surgical tools. This will improve the precision of dispensing drugs and promote innovation in the health sector and other industries. For a fact this is my favorite technology as its application goes beyond health care it may be employed in the built environment for design purposes.
Although these technological trends are seen not all has been put into practice according to my experience. In the case of using patient-centric medical devices, such as smartphones and wearables, patients have been able to monitor their body status by themselves. However, in practice, most of the patients still depend on the caregiver to monitor their body’s status. For instance, in the case of blood pressure monitoring, some patients who do not have the means to afford the wearables and smartphones do visit the health care center so that their body status can be monitored. Additionally, telehealth is not a widely welcomed concept of receiving healthcare services. This is because some people do have the perception that a physical contact with a doctor is more promise than communicating to the physician using a particular platform (Spekowius & Wendler, 2006). As such, patients of this kind do make visits to the doctor regularly.
With the emerging technological the delivery of nursing care has been affected. Genetics and genomics that is an emerging technology have rendered many nurses incompetent. Being a new concept, nurses need to educate patients on matters relating to genetics and genomics, which becomes impossible as they lack the relevant knowledge. This same challenge is faced in the nursing care concerning the use of precision and noninvasive tools. Thirdly, the emergence of biometrics as a security measure of confidential health information is not effective in the nursing care since it is not feasible in a research essay assignment setting where the workforce is rapidly changing constantly. Lastly, three dimensions printing is a challenge that affects the delivery of nursing care as not all materials can be utilized in the printing.
The technological trends in health care are vital for all stakeholders in the healthcare sector. However, with this advancement in technology, there are also notable disadvantages. This is evident when the cloud-based health database is adopted in a health care facility. The health information will be readily available for all who want to use it, therefore, bettering the provision of health care and promoting research endeavors (Mostashari, 2014). However, this technological advancement raises the question of the data ownership and also the cost of implementation is relatively high.
Secondly, the use of non-invasive and precision tools has seen surgeries be more successive and also patients incur less cost (Spekowius & Wendler, 2006). This has a disadvantage as doctors, and other caregivers need to learn newly of how the tools operate before using it and thus reducing the workforce temporarily. Another technological advancement is telehealth that is beneficial as it promotes the interaction between patient and doctor (Spekowius & Wendler, 2006). The demerit of this advancement is that without the physical contact the doctor may not make an informed clinical decision. The fact being that the call was unexpected or presence of disruptions that makes the doctor lost his or her concentration.
With the increasingly used wearables and smartphones, there are innovations and changes in the future which will occur. Patients having a system which helps them to monitor their body calls for a technology, which will be able to integrate the identified body status into a healthcare system and give a likelihood of getting a particular disease and the proper prevention measure. The use of three dimensions printing in the healthcare will change the manufacturing of medical devices to suit this change (Lubitz & Wickramasinghe, 2006).
In conclusion, in this age of rapid technological advancement in various sectors not only health care, but many people are also dependent on technology. This is because many tools have been automated from the household to our working places. With this overreliance, nurses’ hands on aspect are slowly being taken away as patients have the ability to take care of themselves and monitor their bodies. Per se, this will eventually decrease the need for nurses.
References
Lubitz, D., & Wickramasinghe, N. (2006). Healthcare and technology: the doctrine of
networkcentric healthcare. IJEH, 2(4), 322. doi:10.1504/ijeh.2006.010440
Mostashari, F. (2014). Health information technology and Healthcare. Healthcare, 2(1), 1-2.
doi:10.1016/j.hjdsi.2013.12.008
Spekowius, G., & Wendler, T. (2006). Advances in healthcare technology. Dordrecht: Springer.
