Essay On Technology In Healthcare

Improving clinical diagnosis and care have resulted from the use of technologies in healthcare over time. The healthcare industry is undoubtedly the most significant of all the sectors that have profited from technological adoption. As a result, it eventually raised the standard of living and contributed to several lifesavings. IT makes it possible for medical professionals to save and access information about a patient's medical records (Schoville & Titler, 2015). Additionally, it improves the dissemination of patient data in a clear and accessible style. It consequently lessens the possibility of pharmaceutical errors. There are several other benefits it have which enhance its importance in healthcare. However, there are also several challenges it present in the healthcare field. Unprotected clinical information, framing strong communication among healthcare professionals, out-dated softwares are some of the technical issues associated with this technological implementation in the healthcare industry. This report will find out the potential problem which may occur by the use of technology. Along with this, it will also focus on technology contribution for enhancing the healthcare quality. 

 

It might be challenging to introduce new technology into the healthcare sector. Numerous issues need to be taken into account, including whether the technology is secure, how it will be used, and how it will affect patients and healthcare professionals. Healthcare cannot advance due to a lack of technological adoption. For instance, many medical professionals are required to adhere to PIPEDA and HIPAA regulations in order to protect their patients' health records. These experts run the danger of losing client information, which might lead to severe penalties, if they do not use technologies that are consistent with confidentiality regulations to secure health information (Øvretveit, et al., 2007).

 

 

This is only one illustration of the impact that healthcare's lack of technology may have. Many medical professionals are unsure of how to use the technologies or how it will affect their daily operations. Users are hesitant to switch to new technology because of how comfortable and simple their current systems are to use. The idea that new technology is expensive, difficult to use, and has a limited potential for utility. Clinics and hospitals might have doubts regarding the efficacy or security of new technologies. 

 

 

1. Cyber-attack risk - Since the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), which consists of medical equipment and apps, has grown quickly, cyber-attacks have become a serious worry. Equipment in the IoMT ecosystem may be insecure by default, leaving them open to attacks. The growth in the volume and accessibility of health records is another factor contributing to the hazards associated with cyber-attacks (Luna, et al., 2016). 

 

 

2. Dynamic workforce risk - The medical workforce is equipped with tools, technologies, and data to help them treat patients more effectively. The old paradigm has been replaced with a more flexible one where healthcare professionals can treat people remotely as a result of this and the pandemic (Al-Omrani, Al-Khabour & Al-Ruwaili, 2022). However, this exposes businesses to shoddy worker authentication and permission. Additionally, it becomes more challenging to keep an eye on employees' activities. 

 

 

3. Data privacy risk - Considering Patient Health Information, or PHI, can be gathered through a variety of techniques, it is not apparent who is responsible for safeguarding customer data and information. But it's true to suggest that the organisation should eventually bear this duty. Failure to do so could lead to financial losses and, in rare situations, jeopardise the patient's health. Health industry needs a solution that guarantees business continuity and gives the organisation a unified approach to tackle digital threats in order to combat all of this. a method for integrated risk management, quick identification, and user access control. The healthcare industry may prosper and easily adapt to revolutionary change with such a technology, all while reducing security risk (Zarour, et al., 2021). 

 

 

4. Poor training and on-boarding - There are numerous tasks that must be performed in a hospital in accordance with the federal and hospital policy. They employ apps for managing employees, wards, operating rooms, assets & inventories, payroll & HR, online appointment portals, patients, and insurance in order to comply with them. In any case, it is challenging to carry out these numerous tasks and make sense of all the information to guarantee that everything runs smoothly. There is no doubt that classroom training programmes cannot achieve this. Another issue is that regulations evolve over time, and by the time you've trained staff on the current ones, a new standard or set of rules has been developed that businesses must once more adjust to (Vimalachandran, et al., 2016).

 

Conventional applications and technological instruction in healthcare places more of an emphasis on the process than on how to use the software effectively. If new employees are supposed to follow these procedures after only a few trainings, they will get overwhelmed. 

 

 

5. Strict Compliance Regulations and Data Integrity - Any firm involved in the healthcare sector is required to abide by all applicable laws and regulations. Healthcare absorbs new technology just like any other sector, but the process is hampered by the numerous strict laws and regulations. As a result, hospitals and other healthcare institutions avoid utilising cutting-edge technology (Pandey, et al., 2020). These rules are in place for a reason since incorrect data entry leads to inaccurate information, which may be terrible for the business from an operational or even medical aspect. To prevent errors, the personnel must enter data into the programme they use accurately and adhere to the process exactly.

 

 

The accuracy of the data is crucial since certain mistakes could endanger people's lives. Using a digitally adaptation software that can assist you in adhering to data standards is the best way to get around this. It aids staff members in abiding by policies and guidelines governing the software they use. 
Possible solutions

 

 

To enhance patient care and cut costs, the healthcare sector is being pushed to automate more of its processes. Workers who are unsure of or unfamiliar with new technologies frequently object to this move. A digital adoption platform is required to overcome resistance and enable a smooth transition. Software called a DAP assists businesses of all sizes in managing and tracking the introduction of new technology among their employees (Miller, et al., 2016). It will make it easier for patients and healthcare professionals to use the applications they do while maintaining compliance (Hermes, et al., 2020). DAPs aid in identifying potential areas for development to boost user productivity and pleasure by helping individuals interact with apps in a more natural way. DAPs like “Apty” is an example which can aid in overcoming this challenge by offering insights about user behaviour that can be applied to enhance application design and ease everybody's transition to digital health. As it assists with on-screen instruction and automation so that employees may focus on executing the actual job without stressing about repetitive activities, DAP can help you combat digital fatigue (Chandra & Skinner, 2012). 

 

 

Apty can assist in patient guidance as well as in detecting patient pain spots while utilising applications and enhancing workflows to obtain necessary data. Although using new technology in healthcare might be difficult, having the correct tools on hand can be beneficial. Utilize Apty to adopt these crucial tools to improve your patients' Meaningful communication technologies for the healthcare sector must be implemented with high application efficiency and service quality. For example, if we have developed  a digital home care service for patients with chronic illnesses who require round-the-clock observation and quick access to specialists (Pauws, et al., 2019). The nurse would unquestionably want trustworthy, high-quality video, audio, imaging, and patient monitoring data for that use case, which would need to be acquired through linked devices. Without large investments, WebRTC cannot do that out of the box. More importantly, programs must be accessible on the endpoint and gadgets that patients and healthcare workers frequently use. That entails dealing with problems with Wi-Fi, 3G, or 4G connectivity in a world that is becoming more and more mobile-centric. The communications services needs to be optimised to operate dependably in a variety of network contexts and scenarios, including connectivity issues and low bandwidth devices (Agha, 2014). 

 

 

Healthcare firms without full-time internal IT staff can collaborate with a technology vendor who is familiar with the sector to achieve conformity. By having an expert with all the required tools at their disposal handle your IT demands, your medical staff will be able to concentrate on giving patients better treatment. Modern patient-facing technology should be able to offer a full telemedicine experience, enabling patients to amend their information, schedule appointments online, refill medicines, and more. With a cutting-edge, cloud-based technological architecture, you can save care costs while improving patient engagement. 

 

Failure of the technology will lead to the clinical information make unprotected. The security of patient data is among the most urgent problems facing the healthcare sector. Hospitals and clinics nowadays should have strong safety measures in place to safeguard the integrity of their patient records in light of the increasing frequency of security breaches. This security prevention activity will help in protecting the clinical information. Along with this, wrong or inadequate communication is also one of the major issue in healthcare industry. To deliver a high-quality medical service, medical staff personnel must communicate effectively with one another. Both patients and the medical staff may become confused and lose time if health professional team can't communicate effectively. This initiative will also help in dependency on paper for managing clinical information. For storing patient data, many healthcare providers still use paper documents. This can result in a number of issues because it is challenging to arrange and prevent loss or harm to these notes. All of these initiave will help in reducing the security data breach which occurs because of the lack of the strong system. Reducing the breach will improve the client confidentiality and privacy but also it is the right of the customer to take treatment while their identity is confidential.

 

 

The patient satisfaction, travel, and health results can all be dramatically improved through telehealth, a technological endeavour. By recognising symptoms early on, bringing treatment to the client's door enables ease and simplicity for the client.  The amounts of information in healthcare systems, when aided by correlation analytics and machine learning, does have the ability to assist in the prediction of resource waste, at-risk patients, and needful initiatives needed to support both providers and patients, thereby aiding in the improvement of care quality and decrease in overall costs. Predictions concerning the likelihood of developing chronic diseases, readmissions, etc. that can necessitate expensive care can assist medical professionals in making a more accurate diagnosis, initiating early interventions, and reducing undesirable outcomes. All of these initiave lead to reduction in the healthcare cost. Health providers are increasingly using AI to improve allocation of resources and use (Strudwick, 2015). 

 

 

It is apparent that technology has the ability to alter industries, including healthcare. Although it is a field that calls for highly educated, highly competent workers, it also has significant infrastructural and tool demands. The ageing of populations and the increase in life expectancy all around world constitute a very demanding market for healthcare innovative products. AI has the ability to reorganize active systems using previous data to produce sustainable models, providing individualised care and higher productivity as well as bettering outcomes and cutting costs. In addition, digital therapeutics refers to software and hardware created with the aid of artificial intelligence and deep analytics and used in conjunction with conventional medical procedures to directly enhance patient outcomes and lower expenses.

 

 

Agha, L. (2014). The effects of health information technology on the costs and quality of medical care. Journal of health economics, 34, 19-30.

 

 

Al-Omrani, E., Al-Khabour, H., & Al-Ruwaili, A. (2022, February). A Comparative Analysis Of Data Integrity In Healthcare. In 2022 International Conference on Business Analytics for Technology and Security (ICBATS) (pp. 1-5). IEEE. 

 

 

Chandra, A., & Skinner, J. (2012). Technology growth and expenditure growth in health care. Journal of Economic Literature, 50(3), 645-80.

 

 

Hermes, S., Riasanow, T., Clemons, E. K., Böhm, M., & Krcmar, H. (2020). The digital transformation of the healthcare industry: exploring the rise of emerging platform ecosystems and their influence on the role of patients. Business Research, 13(3), 1033-1069. 

 

 

Luna, R., Rhine, E., Myhra, M., Sullivan, R., & Kruse, C. S. (2016). Cyber threats to health information systems: A systematic review. Technology and Health Care, 24(1), 1-9. 

 

 

Miller, C. J., McInnes, D. K., Stolzmann, K., & Bauer, M. S. (2016). Interest in use of technology for healthcare among veterans receiving treatment for mental health. Telemedicine and e-Health, 22(10), 847-854.

 

 

Øvretveit, J., Scott, T., Rundall, T. G., Shortell, S. M., & Brommels, M. (2007). Improving quality through effective implementation of information technology in healthcare. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 19(5), 259-266.

 

 

Pandey, A. K., Khan, A. I., Abushark, Y. B., Alam, M. M., Agrawal, A., Kumar, R., & Khan, R. A. (2020). Key issues in healthcare data integrity: Analysis and recommendations. IEEE Access, 8, 40612-40628. 

 

 

Pauws, S., Gatt, A., Krahmer, E., & Reiter, E. (2019). Making effective use of healthcare data using data-to-text technology. In Data Science for Healthcare (pp. 119-145). Springer, Cham.

 

 

Schoville, R. R., & Titler, M. G. (2015). Guiding healthcare technology implementation: a new integrated technology implementation model. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 33(3), 99-107.

 

 

Strudwick, G. (2015). Predicting nurses’ use of healthcare technology using the technology acceptance model: an integrative review. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 33(5), 189-198.

 

 

Vimalachandran, P., Wang, H., Zhang, Y., Heyward, B., & Whittaker, F. (2016, December). Ensuring data integrity in electronic health records: a quality health care implication. In 2016 International Conference on Orange Technologies (ICOT) (pp. 20-27). IEEE. 

 

 

Zarour, M., Alenezi, M., Ansari, M. T. J., Pandey, A. K., Ahmad, M., Agrawal, A., ... & Khan, R. A. (2021). Ensuring data integrity of healthcare information in the era of digital health. Healthcare Technology Letters, 8(3), 66-77.