Technology Trend in Healthcare Medical and Healthcare

MEDICAL AND HEALTHCARE

Medical and Healthcare: Technology Trend in Healthcare

Technology has transformed the way humans are living lives in recent times, including healthcare. With the use of artificial intelligence and robotics, healthcare professionals aim to infuse technology in almost impossible and unimaginable ways to work towards the best patient care possibilities and reduce medical errors. This paper aims at detailing one of the recent progressions in healthcare and the benefits and limitations it could likely pose.

Application in Various Healthcare Settings

Telemedicine is one of the leading trends, especially after the advent of the pandemic in the past two years that has revolutionized the way healthcare operates. The two-way communication between physicians and patients in a synchronous manner helps collect and track patient health data conveniently with handy devices like personal mobiles and laptops (Alotaibi & Federico, 2017). One of the most iconic trends in telemedicine is remote patient monitoring (RPM) that involves contacting, communicating, and monitoring the patient over a video call with software that helps record and track a patient’s data over time.

RPM could be applied in many healthcare settings, wherever the patient is present, for instance, his home, school, or workplace. The use of smart devices and processes has been in use for its application, along with an active internet connection. Patient monitoring tools are needed to collect patient data and keep a close eye on its physical, vital signs. There are consumer-friendly wearable devices such as watches to keep track of blood pressure and pulse rate etc., a dashboard for gaining a thorough review of the health data, an online patient portal that gives the advantage of accessibility from computer or mobiles anytime for enhancing doctor-patient interactivity, anytime video interaction, data reporting in the form of charts and graphs for helping the doctors be equipped with patient data, and support for integration with hospitals and relevant professionals for future recommendations of medications or interventions (Software Advice, n.a.; Top Flight Apps, 2020).

RPM has positively affected medical and patient care, showing positive clinical outcomes, especially for patients with hypertension, obtrusive pulmonary disease, back pain, and obesity (Noah et al., 2018). Patients do need to have appropriate education for wearable devices; clinicians must be able to diagnose effectively and theoretically produce the results with the integration of commuter related software for the specific device that the patient is wearing; results are showing positive outcomes for certain segments of populations more as compared to other segments. It could be because various types of research conducted earlier are for different types of devices and populations, such as elderly people with hypertension. There is still a need for more studies to provide solid evidence for promising clinical outcomes and the effectiveness of certain RPM devices for particular populations.

Benefits and Limits of RPM

It is chiefly beneficial for reducing hospitalization re-admissions and length of stay for the patients. Some of the major benefits of RPM encompass early detection of the illnesses, being aptly equipped with the continuous monitoring of the patients, improving prevention for ailments to worsen, reducing mortality rates, inducing lesser costs for hospitalizations, producing more precise readings with technological devices, minimizing human errors, bettering the clinical outcomes and enhancing patient safety, enabling care coordination, inducing efficiency into clinical practice, convenient tracking of patient’s daily activities with easily available devices, providing more opportunities of emergency medical care, and offering lesser mobility for the disabled patients, etc. (Malasinghe, Ramzan & Dahal, 2017).

The biggest limitation of telemedicine is its irreplaceability for in-person clinical visits. The doctor can examine the patient physically by checking his eye color, pulse rate, etc. (Saljoughian, 2021). Some patients are not aware of using wearable devices, and with the absence of proper guidance, collecting patient data and recommending interventions could be problematic. There is no emotional connection between the patient and doctor, due to which the patient might not be able to open up completely about his health conditions.

Special Implications for Communities of Color or Special Populations

People of color have high health disparities since they have less access to healthcare facilities and suffer more from chronic conditions (Lee, Karsten & Roberts, 2020). Especially the elderly people of this population are affected more by the health condition. Still, due to the remoteness of medical facilities, telemedicine, specifically remote patient monitoring, could be of high value. This vulnerable population could gain more from RPM than the rest of other high-risk segments of the population since they suffer from poverty, absence of geographic proximity, and less access to healthy food and apposite diet. However, there still exists a need for consumer education about the device use and availability of internet connection in their area so that continuous connection with the physician could be ensured.

Contributions to Individualized or Patient-Focused Medicine from a Social Work Perspective

There is no doubt that telemedicine has provided a new way of communicating with the patient on an individual and personal level in which personalized patient care is offered. Big data could be easily managed through computerized systems in which high-performance is guaranteed with faster computing speed and better design that helps in suggesting enhanced health intervention on an individualized level with the patient’s right to privacy of his data (Morales-Botello et al., 2021). Chronic patients who need special attention as their health condition might worsen at any moment of the day have a great advantage for getting in contact with their physician so that early discovery of the problem could save the individual from having to be hospitalized to a faraway medical spot and wasting time in the journey.

Social workers could be a helpful source for integrating telemedicine and RPM in their practice since remote monitoring for critical patients could be a life savior, especially in times of pandemic (Casale et al., 2021). Collaborations between various primary care teams in managing patient care and following up on each patient’s health condition could be significantly impacted with the use of RPM. Local resources like social workers could increase efficiency and reduce hospitalizations in difficult times like pandemics where social distancing is inevitable.

Use in Field Placement and How

In the nursing field, RPM uses are innumerable since nurses can communicate with patients with more time available to ask them questions (Sasangohar et al., 2018). They can gather resources for the patients on time when sufficient information is present with adequate access. Even at night time, nurses are available in different departments of the hospital who could attend to the patients physically present in the hospital and respond to the ones who would contact them online. Improved and faster communication has given an accelerated ability to provide healthcare solutions to the patients sitting at home. This is even more beneficial when less contact with the patent is needed in pandemic times. The surety of lesser chances of infections or adverse health effects spreading in the vicinities is certified with increased teleconsultation by the nurses through RPM.

Expanding Role of Social Workers in Implementing This Initiative

The expanding role of social health workers is indispensable in promoting telemedicine and RPM, especially for rural communities where there is high racial diversity, older people are present in large quantities, and less access to healthcare facilities is observed due to low socioeconomic status (Nelson & Lang-Lindsey, 2020). Since social workers are usually employed in multidisciplinary teams working closely with such communities, they play an integral role in eliminating cultural and linguistic barriers to healthcare. Deployment of telemedicine by social workers in these communities, in terms of education and awareness of the patients, is of countless worth.