Health Care
Blog > Issues in Depth > Technology > Health Care
Health Care

IT is dramatically improving health care in the following ways:

  • prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases,
  • patient to health care provider interaction,
  • rapid dissemination of information,
  • improved responses to outbreak situations.

Efforts to contain outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases require the rapid collection and transmission of detailed patient data to medical labs or public health centers. Health professionals need tools to communicate important scientific or epidemiological findings to other parts of the health care community. IT is enhancing capacity in each of these areas.

Many health problems in developing countries are being addressed using IT. Digital records and images utilizing digital cameras have made it possible for doctors around the world to share information or offer advice on treatments for complicated ailments. For example, using Internet connections, doctors working in remote regions of northern Uganda during an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus would be able rapidly to transmit their findings to experts at the World Health Organization in Geneva and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

IT systems have had a profound effect on the healthcare system in the U.S. as well as other systems around the world wherein new technologies are utilized in an effort to efficiently providing healthcare to a large audience. New initiatives are being undertaken by governments in a multilateral effort to provide for patients that are not within accessible reach of a hospital. For example, John’s Hopkins University is providing individuals with mobile technology to seek advice or treatment from a doctor that is unattainable due to a lack of resources. Dr. Larry Chang, a Johns Hopkins researcher who studied H.I.V./AIDS and the use of technology in Uganda, said that “over the past decade of working in Africa you really started seeing this amazing growth in the use of mobile phones and it seemed obvious to use it for global health” (Novak, 2012).

Click here for more information on IT and health care: Free Music, Free Software, Free Medicine: Debates on Intellectual Property and Digital Medical Records.

Information Technology Applications in Health and Medicine

  • Patients will have access to their medical records from any location via secured Internet sites. Readily available medical records will help ensure that individuals receive appropriate care when traveling or changing medical institutions.
  • New devices are able to determine the chemical content of blood when placed on top of the skin.
  • A simple digital watch can be incorporated into a pill bottle-cap to record the time and date when the bottle was opened. This will allow medical personnel to monitor the use of medication by patients.

* Picture Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23065375@N05/2234741663/

 

Next: Education