The Impact of Information Technology on Healthcare - Term Paper Example

?IMPACT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ON HEALTHCARE “…Ever since my eye swelled up, I’ve gone to church three times a week to pray for a cure. As soon asI’m better I’m going back to thank God. I always knew He would send a way to make me better—I just didn’t know that it was going to be from London.” Anna Mobutsu, a 23-year-old farm labourer, cannot imagine taking a journey farther than a few hours’ bus ride from her home in the small town of Nelspruit in South Africa. As an illiterate single parent with a seven- year-old son and an elderly mother to support on R5OO (about US$56) a month, Anna does not even have a television to introduce her to a world beyond her own. “…But this afternoon I went to London.” (Fenster, 2000) For over two decades now, the whole world including the academicians, industry, policymakers etc has been harmoniously echoing that Information Technology is such a disruptive tool that has the potential to dislodge legacy systems of any scale related to manufacturing or services sectors in any industry be it healthcare, education, finance, law enforcement, hospitality, entertainment and many others. Industry leaders keep talking about ways to gain competitive edge and their action plan in this context invariably highlights the strategic value that Information Technology now holds for the industry. Information Technology has had very strong social, economic and professional impacts to an extent that it transformed everyone’s life from a student up to almost all the Heads of State. Healthcare – a socially relevant domain too has been impacted by the applications of Information Technology. In almost all the countries, the healthcare delivery system is facing unbending and intransigent issues. The key issue that the healthcare deliver systems worldwide face is: Uneven distribution and shortage of infrastructural and human resources at primary, secondary, tertiary and even super-speciality levels within a healthcare delivery system. This issue gives birth to disparity within the boundaries/same region. This disparity, at times, produces strange dynamics those have the potential to create serious imbalances which are unique to each setting. The issues being faced by healthcare delivery systems are such that they not only highlight existing gaps but can also affect the utilisation of the resources available; such unyielding issues need extraordinary solutions. Information Technology through its highly promising applications is helping this one of the most significant parameter of human development to scale newer challenges (being raised because of ever increasing demands at the healthcare delivery systems, expectations of the beneficiaries), in order to improve efficiency of clinicians and enhance quality of life of the populace on the planet. It is worth mentioning that there are numerous applications of Information Technology and each of them is aimed at empowering all or at least one of the following stakeholders: healthcare delivery systems, clinicians and the patients alike. This research throws light on some of the cutting edge applications of Information Technology in this safety and security domain of medicine and it also includes the impact that these applications have made on the clinicians and paramedical personnel. Telemedicine (Sood, et al., 2007) is a flagship application of Information Technology in health that uses communications networks for delivery of healthcare services and medical education from one geographical location to another. Ranging from public health to surgery, telemedicine has found its roots in almost all the specialities of medicine and this is the reason that gradually telemedicine is merging with the delivery of mainstream healthcare services. Telesurgery and mHealth are two upcoming forms of telemedicine but they have already proved to be practically feasible, reliable, useful and safe. Both these forms of telemedicine can be practised in the modes of teleconsultation (between a doctor and a patient or between a general physician and a specialist and a general physician etc), telehomecare (between the patient and a doctor, between the patient and a paramedical personnel such as a nurse). mHealth  is rapidly becoming popular for mobile practitioners and consumers of healthcare services.  mhealth is the effect of fructification of a blend of technologies such as wireless communications, networking technologies, wearable sensors and instrumentation, mHealth enables the linkage between the clinician and the patient even when one of the two entities are on the move. This application of IT in healthcare is powered by the demand of cellular phones, personal digital assistants, tabs. mHealth facilitates in not only monitoring of physiological parameters like temperature, heart rate, blood pressure but also in transmission of physical activity parameters like fall detection, in real time. As depicted in figure 1, mHealth’s is users include patients in resource limited settings like rural and isolated areas, players and soldiers in the field, patients being transported including mobile clinicians. Networking technologies like Body Area Networks (BANs), Personal Area Networks (PANs) including Bluetooth, Zigbee, Wifi, Global System for Mobiles (GSM) etc enable transmission and reception of the medical data even when the patients and clinicians are on the move. Even fourth generation communications technologies are attempting to integrate existing wireless technologies such as WLAN etc. Figure 1. mHealth (Sood, Mbarika, & Prakash, 2006) Telesurgery is an application of telemedicine that uses communications networks and robotics to facilitate practice of surgeons and medicos. In the case of telesurgery, at the time of a surgery, the surgeon need not be present in the operating room. Through the communications networks, the surgeon controls the robot that actually performs the surgery, the distance between the surgeon and the operating room could be hundreds of kilometres. World’s first telesurgery was performed between by a surgeon who was in New York and the patient was a 68 years old Strasbourg in France (France and New York are 7000 kms apart) (Marescaux, et al., 2001). Key objectives of telesurgery are (Sood S. P., 2007): 1. To enhance precision, safety, and reliability in surgical procedures. 2. To enable specialist surgeons to assist, monitor, educate, and train distant surgeons . 3. To provide surgical expertise to isolated and remote patients (including those in space and underwater) during traumatic as well as generic procedures. Telesurgery can be classified into three forms: Telementoring, Telepresence and Telerobotics. Telementoring involves guidance (or even monitoring) that is provided by a specialist surgeon from another geographical location to an operating surgeon. In the case of telepresence despite the surgeon’s presence in the same room as the patient but the surgeon does not touch or see the patient directly. As far as telerobotics is concerned, the surgeon is assisted by a robot that is controlled by the surgeon from a distance as demonstrated by Marescaux and his colleagues. Concept of telerobotics is depicted in figure 2. Figure 2. Telerobotic Surgery. (Sood, Mbarika, & Prakash, 2006) Benefits of telesurgery (specifically telepresence and telerobotics) are as follows: 1. Lesser pain / smaller incision 2. Quicker recovery 3. Enhanced precision and dexterity 4. Improved ergonomic traits. It is worth including that electronic medical records, ePrescription systems, telemedicine etc that is the applications Information Technology in healthcare have not only changed the looks and feel of the hospitals but have also influenced the way the clinicians (specially the doctors and the nurses) practice. Given below are some perspectives on which Information Technology has impacted the clinicians with respect to their practice: 1. Doctors now use electronic media (medical records, digital images etc) in their daily practice hence they now need to be technology savvy more than ever before. 2. The use of Information Technology has enhanced the concerns from confidentiality’s angle too. The doctors need to authenticate themselves before accessing patient records, this needs them to develop habit of password management. 3. Work flows and processes have changed significantly e.g. the doctors do not have to depend on any assistance from the support staff or the hospital records department to provide to them the medical records, these records are now available to them on their desk at a click of a mouse. 4. The tools for analysing medical information like viewing a 3-dimensional view of the brain is now possible with the help of computerised systems which enable them to make measurements with lot higher accuracy and precision. Thereby enhancing the efficiency of clinicians at work. 5. With the help of Information Technology’s tools like video conferencing they can attend conferences and lectures without moving out of their office. They thus need to learn facing a camera. 6. A specific Information Technology application called telerounding has brought about a paradigm shift in the way the doctors visit the patients at their bed-side, a mobile robot as shown in figure 3 enables this. Telerounding helps the doctor to save time, in other words the doctor can visit larger number of patients hence adding to the productivity and efficiency of the hospital. Figure 3. Telerounding (Science Daily, 2005) 7. With the help of telemedicine, doctors can practice group collaboration and can enable better quality of service to the patients. 8. mHealth is showing up as a boon to the doctors working in the emergency room, such technological tools have helped clinicians to work out treatment plan well in advance e.g. while the patient is being transported from home to the hospital, critically ill patient’s relevant parameters get transmitted to the doctor in the emergency room, by the time the patient arrives the doctor is ready with everything that could save the life of the ailing patient. 9. Even if the doctor is out of hospital, with the help of mHealth, the doctor can still stay connected with his patients. Indicating that doctors need to have mobile communication devices always 10. Information Technology applications like ePrescription systems have drastically reduced the chances of medical errors. Before prescribing a medicine doctors can have a close look at the alternative medicines and their compositions too. Earlier doctors had to go by their memory, i.e. had very limited alternatives. It is worth including that Information Technology has revolutionised the way practitioners in almost all domains practice, the impact is profound in the case of healthcare. The impact of Information Technology on the healthcare professionals has been noteworthy. In the domain of healthcare, Information Technology has contributed to an extent that the clinicians are getting transformed into individuals with supernatural competencies. Bibliography Fenster, P. (2000). Telemedicine. The Times. South Africa. Marescaux, J., Leroy, J., Gagner, M., Rubino, F., Mutter, D., Vix, M., et al. (2001). Transatlantic Robot-assisted Telesurgery. Nature , 97 (2), 279-380. Science Daily. (2005, March 15). World's First Hospital To Introduce Remote Presence Robots In ICU. Retrieved April 21, 2011, from Science Daily: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050309150321.htm Sood, S. P. (2007). Telesurgery. In M. Akay, Encyclopedia of Biomedical Engineering. New York: Wiley Inc. Sood, S., Mbarika, V., Shakhina, J., Dookhy, R., Doarn, C., Prakash, N., et al. (2007). What is telemedicine? A collection of 104 peer-reviewed perspectives and theoretical underpinnings. Telemedicine & eHealth Journal , 13 (5), 573-590. Sood, S.P., Mbarika, V.W.A. and Prakash, N. (2006). Frontiers of Telemedicine: Escorting Healthcare towards pervasiveness. In Sankar, C.S., Mbarika, V., and Raju, P.K., Use of Information Technologies in Businesses and Society: Learning through Real-World Case Studies. New Orleans: Tavenner. Read More