The healthcare industry benefits significantly from healthcare information technology. Through the years, stakeholders in the health industry have created different information technologies that aid in planning, effectiveness and decision-making to improve patient efficiencies, including patient safety and care. However, although technology encroachment in the healthcare industry is associated with various benefits, it is also faced with several challenges.
Healthcare Technological Trends
In the healthcare sector, technological trends related to information and data are widely applied. These technologies include big data analytics, telemedicine and electronic health records. These technological trends have played a significant role in revolutionizing the healthcare sector. For instance, telemedicine allows healthcare providers to utilize wearable devices, including patient monitors, electrocardiograms and mobile phones, to diagnose and track chronic patients remotely (Rao-Gupta et al., 2018). The trend enables asynchronous and synchronous telehealth modalities and minimizes the cost of seeking healthcare services and contact between healthcare providers and patients.
Similarly, electronic health records include digital versions of a patient’s paper charts, thus making patient information available to the intended and authorized users (Sharma & Patten, 2022). In addition, big data analytics enables large data sets’ analysis, thus creating colourations and evolving predictive models. Therefore, these technological trends allow healthcare experts to access patient information quickly, offer efficient remote medical services and simultaneously offer insights into data from complex heterogeneous sources.
Potential challenges and risks
Nonetheless, healthcare technological trends face several challenges, such as privacy concerns and related issues. For instance, using Electronic Health Records brings about major patient privacy concerns due to cyber security attacks that lead to data bleaching. In addition, the Electronic Health Records system implementation and maintenance cost is high since a healthcare organization must invest in expensive software and hardware, acquire the technical IT staff, and conduct maintenance practices more often to prevent malfunctioning (McConnell & Kane, 2018). Also, telemedicine requires patients to be literate on how to utilize software and equipment. Patients find telemedicine complicated to utilize as it necessitates specific software and equipment, thus opting for physical clinical visits. Similarly, the high cost of big data analytics leads to inadequate data governing procedures such as data formatting, cleaning and formatting, thus preventing data capturing from different sources. Thus, significant challenges facing the healthcare technology trends include cyber security concerns, high implementation and maintenance costs and inadequate literacy levels to utilize the necessary software and equipment.
Data Safety
A potential benefit among the outlined technologies includes their security to protect patient data. These technologies can utilize cryptography to protect patient data, thus preventing cyber security and guaranteeing patient information privacy concerns and safety. However, a potential risk includes the hackers threat, which might lead to data systems challenges upon accessing the software storing patient information.
Promising healthcare technology trends
The Electronic Healthcare Records system is the most promising technological trend. This trend includes patient portals that allow the healthcare professional to access patient data quickly and grant patients access to their medical records, improving disease prevention and awareness through consistent patient engagement, thus increasing self-management (Sharma & Patten, 2022). Despite the security concerns, which can be mitigated using technical controls such as intrusion prevention and firewalls to prevent security breaches, this trend can continue to improve patient care data management and outcomes as it will prevent medical errors and improve patient safety and care efficiency due to easy data access.
Conclusion
Healthcare technology trends affect various aspects of patient care and safety. Examples include Electronic Health Records systems, telemedicine and big data analytics, whose main aim is to improve patient care and efficiency through easy access to data, remote medical services and information available from various healthcare sources. However, information technologic hazards can severely impact patient safety and care delivery, thus necessitating the need for security awareness training, installation of security software and increasing software and equipment awareness among users.
Reference
McConnell, R. A., & Kane, S. V. (2018). The potential and pitfalls of using the electronic health record to measure quality. Official journal of the American College of Gastroenterology| ACG, 113(8), 1111–1113.
Rao-Gupta, S., Kruger, D., Leak, L. D., Tieman, L. A., & Manworren, R. C. (2018). Leveraging interactive patient care technology to improve pain management engagement. Pain Management Nursing, 19(3), 212–221.
Sharma, P., & Patten, C. A. (2022). A need for digitally inclusive health care service in the United States: recommendations for clinicians and health care systems. The Permanente Journal, 26(3), 149.
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