Introduction
One must consider comfort and healthcare to improve an individual’s well-being and quality of life. With this said, automation of repetitive or time-consuming processes is necessary. This drive to enhance a civilization’s day-to-day routine has led to technological advancements that have spread to all corners of society, one of these corners being that of healthcare. Even though new technologies have brought various advantages to the healthcare sector, specific concerns about their use and integration in healthcare have been raised. There are advantages and disadvantages to using technology in healthcare. Its benefits include enhancing patient safety and confidentiality, improving access to information, and organizing data and information. These advantages also include efficiency and flexibility in treatment and enhanced patient education. On the other hand, the disadvantages of using technology in healthcare are that it is susceptible to breach of patient information, there may be room for a lack of empathy in patient-doctor interactions, and frustrations (from both parties) due to poor technology implementation.
Advantages
Increasing patient confidentiality and data security, technology has several advantages for healthcare organizations. First, it improves patient safety by utilizing medication warnings, clinical flags and reminders, clinical decision support, enhanced recording and reporting of consultations and diagnostic tests, and the availability of comprehensive patient data (Astier et al., 2020). Health IT data has been shown to enhance medical practice and help assess the success of various treatments. Medical alerts may also improve guideline and evidence-based care compliance. Through standardized medical records, it is possible to reduce practice variances, conduct systematic audits for quality assurance, and optimize evidence-based therapy for common illnesses.
In addition, the use of technology enhances the easy retrieval of information. Through a centralized database, physicians have easy and rapid access to the data and information about their patients (Tian et al., 2019). In the past, medical professionals would look for patient information in files, which was a procedure that was both time-consuming and inefficient. In addition, it gives patients access to their medical information, making them feel better informed about their treatment plan and disease process/management and encouraging them to take an active role in the decision-making process that is being jointly undertaken. It may enhance follow-up for missed visits, consultations, and diagnostic tests, all of which occur outside the patient interaction. For example, a health care professional can search within a practice for specific patient cohorts to monitor and increase adherence to specified health care, such as hemoglobin levels.
Technology improves the organization of data and information. Data and information may be better organized owing to technological advancements. A technology-based healthcare approach averts fraudulent claims on insurance policies and frivolous litigation. Some patients habitually tell insurance companies false claims about their hospitals’ services. Consequently, patients can no longer provide incorrect information while using technology. On the other hand, physicians’ ability to quickly and easily access patient information and data has increased treatment quality. They do not need patients to supply information since they already have it all in digital form.
Additionally, healthcare technology has resulted in flexibility and efficiency in treatment through remote monitoring tools. Its goal is to make it possible for medical professionals to track the development of their patients even when they are not in a hospital or other clinical environment. Patients benefit further from this since it results in fewer trips to the hospital that are not essential. For example, the ability of modern pacemakers, which are driven by the Internet of Things, to be operated remotely has fundamentally altered the delivery of medical treatment (Mukati et al., 2021). These remote monitoring gadgets keep track of the patient’s cardiac state and relay that data to the telemedicine center in real time. Other examples of remote monitoring equipment are blood pressure cuffs equipped with Bluetooth, which can communicate data about the patient’s blood pressure in real time to the physician so that it may be examined. These remote monitoring technologies, as opposed to a traditional in-person visit, enable the healthcare practitioner to provide superior patient care by progressively developing a more profound knowledge of the patient’s symptoms throughout their treatment.
Another advantage of using technology in the healthcare industry is that it leads to enhanced patient education. Education of patients has become an increasingly important component of healthcare, and practitioners are more open to technology that might improve patients’ access to information and stimulate their interest. In addition, thanks to technological advancements, patients now have access to software and programs that deliver health education material that is individualized to their requirements and situations.
Disadvantages
There are some disadvantages associated with healthcare technology use. First, it raises the possibility of inappropriate use of private information (Keshta & Odeh, 2021). Inconvenient access to patient records increases doctors’ risk of improperly utilizing such forms. Additionally, healthcare data breaches are more likely when Who may access information rapidly. Finally, because more information and data are stored in databases, the integrity of that data is vulnerable to technological advances through hacking.
Another disadvantage of using technology in healthcare is that it results in a lack of empathy in doctor-patient interactions. There is no question that telehealth has made it possible for patients and doctors to maintain a connection despite the physical distance between them. Furthermore, as more and more practitioners embrace the strategy of telehealth, one-time consultations are fast becoming a thing of the past. Nevertheless, technology is serving as the go-between in all of this activity. Although this makes sense from the perspective of increasing productivity while simultaneously decreasing costs, it needs to be clarified when considering the human element of treatment. Connected gadgets and dashboards cannot provide the personal touch of an empathic human being, which is something that patients yearn for. This is particularly true of geriatric patients or otherwise fragile; they may have trouble comprehending the treatment plan, and there is a possibility that they may be confused about the diagnosis of their ailment.
Moreover, technology in healthcare often results in frustrations with poor implementation of the given technology. Technology is excellent if and only if it does its job. In healthcare, where outcomes may be life or death, the technologies must provide care for patients to be reliable and consistently enhance the standard of care currently being offered. Technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) rely strongly on past data and may need to adapt more efficiently to operational data, leading to substantial mismatches. As a result, clinical staff may feel complacent since these problems may only arise in some situations. Complacency might cause people to stop checking the system’s predictions against other methods.
Conclusion
The use of technology in healthcare has evolved into a fundamental component of medical practice. Introducing new information and communication technologies in the healthcare sector brings many possibilities for both positive and negative outcomes. It improves patient safety and treatment, access to information and data, and data management, among other things. However, this leaves data and information vulnerable to medical breaches and the knowledge of patients vulnerable to scammers. It is indeed true that technology has significantly altered the medical field. Therefore, healthcare organizations should use a wide variety of modern systems and software available to improve efficiency and quality of treatment.
References
Astier, A., Carlet, J., Hoppe-Tichy, T., Jacklin, A., Jeanes, A., McManus, M., Pletz, M., W., Seifert, H., & Fitzpatrick, R. (2020). What is the role of technology in improving patient safety? A French, German and UK healthcare professional perspective. Journal of Patient Safety and Risk Management, 25(6), 219-224.
Keshta, I., & Odeh, A. (2021). Security and privacy of electronic health records: concerns and challenges. Egyptian Informatics Journal, 22 (2), 177–83.
Mukati, N., Namdev, N., Dilip, R., Hemalatha, N., Dhiman, V., & Sahu, B. (2021). Healthcare assistance to Covid-19 patients using internet of Things (IoT) enabled technologies. Materials today: proceedings.
Tian, S., Yang, W., Le Grange, J. M., Wang, P., Huang, W., & Ye, Z. (2019). Smart healthcare: making medical care more intelligent. Global Health Journal, 3(3), 62-65.