Healthcare Informatics and Technology
Introduction. In the context of today’s rapidly developing technological changes, new technologies becomes more and more important in patient care and health education. A number of ethical issues have been raised regarding the use of some of these platforms because of the privacy concerns and likelihood of wrong diagnosis and prescriptions. Although some policy makers consider that continuous increase in use of information technology in patient education is not the best option for the reason of its high cost, others state that information technology needs to be used for patient empowerment but requires more experimental studies and improvement. Anyway, the use of information technologies within healthcare system continues to increase and the number of nurses and patients who are engaged in this process, as well, continuously increases. This poses a lot of challenges to healthcare environment, which have to be addressed as soon as possible.
I. Emerging Technologies in Healthcare.
In the changing world through communication and technology, modification in the healthcare sector is inevitable. These new technologies will primarily be used to educate the patients, family, and population on how to respond to health issues and management of diet. The most meaningful inventions include applications for testing and diagnosing patients, which can be installed in Android mobile phones. Under such circumstances, a lot of attention will be paid to educating patients how to use the application. When the patients would have done the test or the diagnosis, the system can be linked in a way to send the report to the nurses. Another innovative emerging technology in healthcare system is connected to patients being enabled to how to check on the best diet to eat. A digital application will be developed, with will help the nurses to send messages to patients and their families on what to eat. Families will be provided with a system that will guide them in selecting a proper diet. Through the system of advising on diet, there will be no cases of suffering from diseases caused by poor dieting. An entire population can be educated on how to keep a healthy environment.
II. Various Informatics and Technology Problems.
A number of technological platforms can be used in delivering healthcare education and each of these platforms has its advantages and disadvantages. The major of them include Internet applications, mobile applications and home telepath applications. Internet based applications appear to be extremely helpful in patient education. There are plenty of patient centered informative websites, which provide education on diseases and health conditions (for example, the IT enabled self-care asthma monitoring system, which is used by asthma patients). Some of these websites allow for communication between patients, health practitioners and the community. Another technological platform used for delivering patient care and healthcare information is mobile devices, which have applications that allow patents to access information and are not restricted to one’s physical location. Devices used for this …
