The Impacts of Medical Technology in Health Care

Technology refers to the use of planned skills and knowledge in the method of medication, vaccination, devices, events and structures formed to improve the quality the quality of life and gives out solutions to health problems which includes the strategies, the medicines, events and organizational ways used in health care (Blumenfeld, 2017). The use of technology in the healthcare sector has recently been expanding at a vast rate. Technology has been of very much significance to the healthcare industry. Unlike the older days, the use of technology has made it easy for both the healthcare workers and the patients. This paper seeks to talk about and explore the types of technology in health care, the impacts of medical technology in health care, both positive and negative impacts and how one can lobby legislators and local government for funds to support the technology in the health care.

Types of Technology in the Health Care Industry

A small number of hospitals used the electronic health record by 2009, but by 2013 a big percentage of the hospitals incorporated the electronic health record into their organizations. By using these systems into the health care platform hence allowing more efficient and integrated care for patients. The electronic health record is also used as a data and population health tool for future reference. When we use data in making decisions that are used to improve and change the results of the consistency of medicine given. The electronic health record also reduces the chances of losing information and the health records of the patients hence an easier way of retrieving the information of the patients (Bates, 2012).

Another type of technology in health care is the portal technology. Portal technology is helping out patients as they are increasingly participating actively in their healthcare. This technology allows patients and doctors to access medical records and interact online. This type of technology allows patients to participate more closely and get more education about their health and easement the access and availability of medical information. Also, technology creates responsibilities and empowerment to the patients about their health. This is a nice technology since it allows a patient to be an extraordinarily ally in their care since they are active participants of their health.

There have also been some medical innovations in the field of health care. The first medical technology is cutting back on melanoma biopsies. There has been the emergence of a fatal form of melanoma and skin cancer and a large number of hazardous looking moles which are harmless, but it has always been hard for one to know minus the invasive surgical biopsy. Nowadays the dermatologists use a handheld tool to analyze the tissue morphology. The male find optical scanner does not define the diagnosis; it provides extra information to the doctor to use in defining whether to order a biopsy. The purpose of this technology is to decrease the number of patients left with pointless biopsy scars with an advantage of eradicating the cost of needless procedures.

Another medical technology is the electronic aspirin. The aspirin is used by people who suffer from severe headaches, migraines and other sources of chronic facial and head pain. Doctors have for a long time related the most severe and chronic forms of a headache with a facial nerve bundle but have not been successful in finding the treatment that treats the sphenopalatine ganglion for a long time. A patient-powered tool is a technology used for blocking signals of SPG at the first sign of a headache. This process has the permanent implant of a small nerve stimulating device on the side of the head that is always affected in the upper gum.

The self-service kiosks are also a technology that has brought about a lot of improvements in the health sector. The self-service kiosks help the process of registration in hospitals. Patients can easily do things that are related to registration without seeking any help from anyone or talking to anyone. Most patients are comfortable with this since it helps with staffing savings. Automated kiosks help the patients with checking identification, paying co-pays, signing paperwork and other necessary registration requirements.  There are also some tablet variations that allow this technology to be used in bedside settings and outpatients. Although the hospitals need to take caution when incorporating it to make sure human to human communication is not eliminated, such that if a person wants to communicate to another one they should be able to communicate hence, it helps the patient to do everything in the hospital without any difficulties.

There is also the invention of wireless communication. Although this walkie-talkies and instant messaging are not new technologies in other sectors, they had not be introduced in a hospital setting which came to replace the overhead pagers and beepers. This has helped hospitals to catch up with the twenty-first century with staff communicating with one another. There was a slow development of the internal communication advancement in hospitals since they had to account for HIPAA concerns and security issues. Patients were able to send secure messages like alerts and lab tests to one another using smartphones, third-party clinical systems and web-based consoles with the existence of systems like Vocera messaging. These messaging systems help accelerate the communication process as it logs sent and received information and tracking information in a well-secured way.

Remote monitoring tools was another type of technology where it helped the physicians to monitor and check on the health of the patients hence reducing unnecessary visits to the hospital for a check-up, and also it helps reduce the cost of medication since the patient does not pay consultation fee to the doctor and the transport to go to the physician’s office. It also helps to save on time. An example is a cardiac cast which has the pacemaker that transmits data to remote centers. This is a helpful technology to patients with chronic and serious illnesses. For instance, the readmission for the heart disease patients reduced when the health sector implemented a home monitoring system hence hospitals being castigated for readmissions with the home monitoring systems giving a solution to avoiding these penalties (Brettlecker, et, al, 2018).

Impacts of Medical Technology in Health Care

The technological innovations bring about the advantages and disadvantages in the health sector which are discussed in this section. By introducing electronic health records to replace paper, records has been a game changer for many related healthcare professionals. Medical records,  billing, medical assistants,  health information technicians, and registered nurses are the roles that have been compressed by this implementation .this has given the nurses and the technicians responsibility to input patient data such as weight, test results and vital signs into a digitized and central system. In hospitals medical billers, side things and coders use electronic health records to update patient records with diagnostic codes scheduling the appointment and presenting medical claims.

There is improved public health. The electronic health records produce invaluable data to clinical researchers who have improved the development of new treatments for common health problems and medical knowledge. The identification of bacterial and viral infections has become faster and easy due to a standardized and a central system throughout the whole healthcare field. This has helped easy notification of how an outbreak has spread and providing preventative ways to be taken much more quickly. Also, through wireless communication, a lot of people get awareness in case of any outbreak and also provided information on what preventive measures to take.

The medical technologies have helped in the collection of big data. This is where large amounts of information have been collected and stored from different sources that are prepared and used for analysis. Dealing with the public, healthcare stores and collects large amounts of information and data. This data helps in predicting epidemics, avoiding unnecessary deaths, reducing the cost of healthcare, improving quality of life, coming up with new drugs and treatments and improving efficiency and quality of care (Ovretveit et. Al., 2017).

Ease of workflow is also a result of the introduction of technology in the health care .the electronic health record has impacted coders and medical  billers hence making their life much easier since feeding data into a computer is much easier and consumes less time than paper-based methods.it also decreases the chances of making errors in financial details and patients data and it’s also easier to access a patients records since they are viewed in a portable device hence increasing productivity and efficiency. With the introduction of portal technology has also reduced the work load since the patients also participate actively in their healthcare. The self-service kiosks also make registration easy hence no congestion of patients.

There is enhanced patient care. The electronic health record can be viewed by any medical facility which is helpful to the physician to access a patient’s medical history hence they alert the doctor to potential issues such as intolerances and allergies to some medicines. With remote monitoring tools, there is improved patient health care since the doctor monitors the patient while at home and if there is any problem with the patient the doctor can be contacted. It is mostly helpful to patients with chronic and serious diseases. Tailoring treatment offers promising benefits for healthcare efficiency and diagnostic accuracy hence enhancing patient care.

The information and communication technology has helped people to connect with one another from where they hence transforming its communication process between patients and doctors hence people get the knowledge about their health through communicating and asking questions from the internet.it has also helped people in rural places and areas which lack facilities and specialties services. The telemedicine, webcam, smartphones and emails help to share information.

How to Lobby Legislators and the Local Government for Funds

By starting giving an idea of buying a remote monitoring tool for the rural areas to help the elderly people and the people who have chronic and serious illness being monitored while at home and also for the people with heart diseases therefore ask the local government to support you with funds to support your project of helping improve the healthcare of the people in remote areas and also reduce the cost of their treatment.

Conclusion

The use of technology in the healthcare sector has recently been expanding at a very rapid rate. Technology has been of very much significance to the healthcare industry. Unlike the older days, the use of technology has made it easy for both the healthcare workers and also the patients. This is due to the fact that the new technology has enabled the healthcare industry to use the Electronic Health Record and it has made the records of the information very easy and also the retrieval of the information stress-free. Other technological advancements on the healthcare industry that have been discussed are the introduction of patient’s portal and the use of service kiosks. The advantages that have been brought by the new technology are more compared to the disadvantages that have been brought by the new technology. There have been very many positive impacts of the technological advancement on the healthcare industry. The impacts that have been discussed on this paper are; technology has led to ease of workflow, it has saved on labor on the employees of the healthcare industry, patients can now access health care services through booking of appointments using the patient’s portal that is available to them. Finance can be borrowed from the government to improve the level of technology in the healthcare industry (Blumenfeld, 2017). This is because technology is of very great importance to the healthcare industry and also to the people of the public.

References

Bates, D. W. (2012). The quality case for information technology in healthcare. BMC medical informatics and decision making, 2(1), 7.

Blumenfeld, S. (2017). Productivity - The Role Of Technology In The Delivery Of Health Care. Health Care Technology Policy I: The Role of Technology in the Cost of Health Care. doi:10.1109/hctp.1994.721276

Brettlecker, G., Cáceres, C., Fernández, A., Fröhlich, N., Kinnunen, A., Ossowski, S., ... & Vasirani, M. (2018). Technology in healthcare. In CASCOM: Intelligent Service Coordination in the Semantic Web (pp. 125-139). Birkhäuser Basel.

Beuscart-Zephir, M. C., Brender, J., Beuscart, R., & Menager-Depriester, I. (2007). Cognitive evaluation: how to assess the usability of information technology in healthcare. Computer methods and programs in biomedicine, 54(1-2), 19-28.

Øvretveit, J., Scott, T., Rundall, T. G., Shortell, S. M., & Brommels, M. (2017). Improving quality through effective implementation of information technology in healthcare. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 19(5), 259-266.