Technologies Impact on Healthcare Level

Technologies Impact on Healthcare Level of School

Technologies impact on healthcare

Technology and especially information technology has been in the forefront of making big impact in the delivery of healthcare facilities (Ferri & Klein, 2000). While almost all of the businesses have embraced the use of technology to improve their work processes, health industry is still being slow in adopting the use of technology while knowing that the use of technology will become important for their competitiveness. This has become especially critical because healthcare spending fuelled by an increasing explosion of diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and chronic heart failure is growing rapidly. To deal with such scenarios, health care industry will be forced to leverage the use of electronic systems for managing health care solutions (Lovata, 2000).

With the continued evolution and broad adoption of the Internet, healthcare administration is finally catching up to with the technology revolution. The Internet has allowed for the automation of many processes needed to manage patient access to care, healthcare delivery, information distribution and even health benefit design. Since healthcare is data intensive; it is of paramount concern that data are recorded accurately for consumer satisfaction. There are several healthcare processes that have been made amenable to information technology. For example, many hospitals have automated such processes a physician referrals, formulary management, and claims adjudication among others. In addition, there are broad varieties of activities from disease research to management of family medical histories can be done through the Internet such as Web MD (Lovata, 2000). All of these applications of information technology are considered important in customization of health programs that that fit specific family health and financial needs. Similarly, the uses of integrated databases are being used to quickly update and improve the delivery of urgent medical needs of the patients. One of the recent advancement known as Clinical Data Repository (CDR) initiative is being considered to acquire data from relevant sources -- such as pharmacy, laboratory and encounter systems -- and then to clean it, match it, and put it into one large database built on a single technology platform. The database will then be used to generate regular comparative reports regarding data integrity, utilization management and quality improvement. In addition, over a secure Web connection, participating medical groups will be able to query the database remotely to perform unique analyses.

The use of this CDR database will offer guidance to participating medical groups and health plans access to a broad range of clinical analyses for such purposes as assessing internal data capture rates; evaluating compliance with clinical protocols; identifying patients who would benefit from interventions; providing reports to physicians about their patients; and communicating directly to patients in order to improve health outcomes. The benefits of CDR are in integrating the managed care as well as reviewing the effects of the medications over the long-run. The other benefits of electronic delivery systems lie from the provider viewpoint, as these providers can use technology as a competitive tool.

Electronic medical records offer doctors and patients increased efficiency, for example, while health plans can use specialized software to analyze factors such as cost, quality, and efficiency to determine which hospitals and physicians to include in their network. Similarly, the use of Web MD provides consumers valuable source of information about their health so that they can take proactive actions before visiting to the doctors. Consumers also make use of these electronic databases for checking the alternative treatments or looking at doctor's background. In another words, with the rise of the electronic media, consumer-driven healthcare is beginning to take shape around different models.

With the rise of the wireless technologies, the pressure is growing even higher for healthcare delivery so that physicians, nurses and other healthcare providers are able to access the most current information on a patient or health remedies instantly. Without innovative and reliable wireless technology, healthcare delivery may suffer as providers scramble to find needed information (Treese, 2000). However, the wireless electronic communications are subject to interception -- both internally at the locations participating in telemedicine/telehealth interactions and externally during transfer of information between locations. The interception might acquire a data or eavesdrop on audio transmission, or it could extend to viewing an entire audio/video care delivery process. In general, information placed into communications networks is vulnerable to interception by unauthorized individuals at the points where it enters or leaves a device on the communications path.

To alleviate and address healthcare and administrative problems related to the use of the archaic systems, increasing investment in Integrated Healthcare Communication Systems (IHCS) becomes important. This is necessary to provide a seamless platform on which health solutions can be effectively integrated and deployed. Without using such a platform, the development of electronic health care facilities will be more difficult to deploy. In other words, Tele-health is part of the overall healthcare ICT (Information Communications Technology) solutions that enables healthcare to be pushed out to the edge, for local delivery, and to be more evenly, efficiently and effectively distributed.

Broadband communication is the underlying technology of choice when discussing electronic applications. It is certainly important for inter-healthcare provider communications delivering sufficient bandwidth capacity between sites. The delivery of home care electronic should not rely on the broadband technology is not universally accessible, particularly in rural and remote areas, and it can also be prohibitively expensive. Some broadband technologies can be delivered to remote locations, such as satellite-based technology, but this is impractical and too costly to deliver extensive home care. Broadband connectivity to the home should not be the common denominator in delivering health facilities. Broadband simply means being able to deliver real-time health applications and the ability to send huge amounts of information in a short space of time. Electronic delivery of health care facilities should not be developed that automatically rely on broadband connectivity; as it invariably adds no value to the application. Certainly, in devising any such solutions, the healthcare industry is required to take into consideration those people accessing the services and applications. When designing electronic applications of health care facilities, it becomes necessary to consider how they will be used and who will use them (Puskin, Mintzer, & Wasem, 1997). It is impractical to develop a plethora of equipment doing the same things but designed for different people.

Conclusions

Changing the face of healthcare delivery will take time and a phased approach will be required. There are many steps to follow and challenges to overcome for the successful delivery of health care facilities. In order for the successful implementation of electronic systems to deliver, its capabilities in healthcare facilities new lines of thinking will be required. In sum, in order to cut cost, healthcare industry will have take quick initiatives to adopt technology solutions that allow health care providers to reduce costs while providing high quality care.