Technology in the Medical Field Essay Example

Technology plays a key function in many people’s day-to-day lives, within recent years medical technology has greatly advanced allowing for more efficient transactions between patients and caregivers. The evolution from medical files being strictly paper documentation to a person being able to pull up their file digitally at really any given place. These new innovative technologies allow medical professionals to be able to get a more accurate diagnosis with unusual symptoms. Smart technology, such as smartphones, has allowed patients to be able to communicate with medical professionals instantly. While a few decades ago patients would have to ask for their care provider to mail a copy of their medical history to wherever it needed to be. There are several benefits of smart technology within the medical field, such as appoints can be held virtually and medical information is more accessible in poor or rural areas. Smartphones have allowed patients to track their health easily and this information can be quickly sent to medical professionals for further evaluation.

While many people view smart technology to be very beneficial for our society and individual health. Others fear there is a lack of privacy for their medical information, along with the fear of anyone possibly accessing medical information without their permission. A survey was conducted that asked medical physicians' and consumers'/patients view on innovative medical technology, one of the questions asked was about their confidence in the privacy and security of their medical records. The results of the survey about the question about security and privacy of digital health technology showed that 35% of the medical physicians surveyed were slightly less concerned about this issue, while 42% of patients had concerns relating to using digital health technology (Boeldt et. al). This idea of accessing or having digital medical history will put your privacy and security at risk can be relieved by the fact firstly it is illegal for a physician to share your medical information without your written consent. Also, due to the advancement of technology has resulted in software being created that helps protect and block those trying to breach private medical information. New medical technologies allow us to have a greater understanding of our health at a faster rate compared to paper medical files. Private medical is greatly protected and with a person’s consent, a physician is capable of sharing and receiving information from other physicians for a more accurate diagnosis. 

Managing a patient’s health can be very difficult without having specific details and vitals, but evolving technology has allowed for multiple apps that can be downloaded on a patient's smartphone that records, notifies, and informs them and their physician about their health. The apps on smartphones can be catered to various amounts of people with different medical issues and provide a more precise measurement of a patient’s health and can notify a physician immediately if there were issues. An example that was found while researching the topic of smart technology’s role in patient health management was an app for people with Pompe disease. According to the national institute of neurological disorders and stroke defines Pompe disease is a rare inherited gene mutation that disables the heart and skeletal muscles. An app called AIGkit was created for people that were diagnosed with Pompe disease to have easy access to knowledge about their disease, clinical file, and a training plan (Ricci et. al). This is just one of the many health tracking apps that represent the significance that smart technology has accomplished for improving how we record and manage patient health today. Another example of new smart technology that is both beneficial for patients and medical personal is robot-assisted surgery. The article goes into fine detail about the increased usage and spread of robot technology being used during surgery during the early 2000s. According to Barbash et. al laparoscopic surgery results in less recovery time, less scarring, and a decreasing percentage of infection due to the robot technology being a less invasive form of surgery compared to the typical surgeries performed. While these are positive results of new technology, a negative is the expensiveness of the robot and many new smart technologies that range around $1 million. While these inventions are beneficial for helping advance the medical world, it is more expensive to use smart technology. This overall results in making these resources less accessible for poor and rural areas.

This topic relates to health systems management because in this field your job involves recording the medical information of patients and this career will be using these new technologies to help patients. It is important to be able to compare how medical information use to be recorded and how it got t it where it is today and will continue to improve for the betterment of the patients and people in medical professions. Especially within the last 2 years during covid has shown the significance of digital medical technology plays in many people’s lives. Telehealth was steadily increasing for a few years before COVID-19, but when quarantine occurred it became very common for patients to meet or communicate with physicians virtually due to limitations. El-Miedany analyzed how standard health care was changing to become more digital. In the beginning when the shift to health care went more digital many people were skeptical and were worried that when discussing with physicians instead of focusing on the patient they would be more fixated on their computer or smartphone. As years passed having medical information becoming digital allowed for more accessibility for medical information and communication with medical personal. According to El-Miedany when a group was surveyed about a telehealth consultation 84% of the patients believed the virtual appointment was just as good as a in-person appointment. The telehealth and telemedicine article was very useful in my research because it also broke down that digital medical fits can be divided into different divisions from only having one physician having access to the file and if needed to be shared it would need to be printed and mailed. While the other 2 were more digital and allowed multiple physicians access along with having a more advanced family medical history. Our society is still transitioning to understanding and using smart technology to record our medical information and health.

Researching the significance that smart technology has had on the medical field and managing a patient’s health taught me that working in this field will require a great understanding of technology and being able to adapt to it to help patients. Also, this taught me that my career will help facilitate conversations and provide support to both physicians and patients and I will need to learn to be able to do so in an efficient way. I feel this topic of digital healthcare and smart technology's role in patient health because of the pandemic and we quickly relied on telehealth for receiving health consultations. If I were to do more research on this topic I would probably look more into the smartphones possibly being able to track symptoms of mental illnesses and send the recorded information to a psychiatrist or psychological care. Mou’s article about using smartphones to help improve psychiatric care stated, “Multiple National Health Service sites in England have implemented a smartphone app that notifies clinicians in real-time when patients report alarming changes in their symptoms of psychosis.” This statement interests me more about this topic because being able to detect mental illness symptoms can be difficult, even for the patient, and will possibly help define what that person may need. 

References

Barbash, Gabriel I,M.D., M.P.H., & Glied, S. A., PhD. (2010). New technology and health care costs -- the case of robot-assisted surgery. The New England Journal of Medicine, 363(8), 701-4. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp1006602

Boeldt, D. L., Wineinger, N. E., Waalen, J., Gollamudi, S., Grossberg, A., Steinhubl, S. R., McCollister-Slipp, A., Rogers, M. A., Silvers, C., & Topol, E. J. (2015, September 14). How consumers and Physicians View New Medical Technology: Comparative Survey. Journal of medical Internet research. Retrieved November 6, 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4642377/. 

El-Miedany, Y. (2017). Telehealth and telemedicine: How the digital era is changing standard health care. Smart Homecare Technology and TeleHealth, 4, 43-51. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/SHTT.S116009

Mou D. (2016). Battling severe mental illnesses with smartphones: how patients' smartphone data can help improve clinical care. mHealth, 2, 32. https://doi.org/10.21037/mhealth.2016.08.03

Ricci, G., Baldanzi, S., Seidita, F., Proietti, C., Carlini, F., Peviani, S., Antonini, G., Vianello, A.,& Siciliano, G. (2018, March 12). A mobile app for patients with Pompe disease and its possible clinical applications. Neuromuscular Disorders. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960896617314979. 

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.). Pompe Disease Information Page. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/All-Disorders/Pompe-Disease-Information-Page#:~:text=onset%20Pompe%20disease.-,Pompe%20disease%20is%20a%20rare%20(estimated%20at%201%20in%20every,alpha%2Dglucosidase%20(GAA).