Social Technologies Influence on Health Behavior, Telemedicine and Health Monitoring - Essay Example

Social Technologies Influence on Health Behavior (Name) (University) Social Technologies Influence on Health Behavior Over the past few years, Smartphones have significantly changes various aspects of everyday life; medicine is next. Given the improved digital technologies, machine learning and cloud computing, medicalized Smartphones are upending various aspects of health care. Health is, "a given state of total physical, psychological and social safety not only because of the absence of diseases" (Nordqvist, 2015). Technology is a powerful medium in the provision of individualized support to health care users (Healthmeadialeader,2016). The increased development in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has had a significant impact on the ways of public health interventions and providence of healthcare services while enhancing new openings and challenges (Healthleadersmedia, 2016). This retrospect paper seeks to understand the effects of Smartphone on human health. In order to provide efficient healthcare services, medical practitioners have adopted different persuasive mobile approaches [Lau16]. Some of the approaches include prompts to mobile users in the form of messages as a reminder of engaging in healthy behaviors. The messages are sometimes used to sensitize the users on health based issues such the effects of smoking (Baumer, 2012). . However, critics observe that prompt messages may results in resistance, especially when viewed as nuisance messages (Baumer, 2012). A wider society well receives the importance of employing the internet to provide behavior change programs (Dickinson et al., 2013). . As the people become aged and some develop lifestyle diseases, the cost of medications continues to become extremely expensive for some people to afford. The good news is that some of this conditions when attended to very early, many families can be saved the trouble of striving to treat their loved ones (Dickinson et al., 2013). . Technological aspect is brought in to help facilitate the efficiency of our healthcare services and provide the clinicians the ability to share information with the patients very quickly. Some of the technological methods applied are the use of a Smartphone, websites, and other devices (Dickinson et al., 2013). . That can convey store and record health information. Telemedicine and Health Monitoring Telemedicine is defined as the use of medical information through exchanging it from on site to another through an electronic medium of communication to improve the patient’s health (Laura et al., 2013) The methods employed include applying various applications such as email, websites, and other wireless technologies. Most countries face similar challenges in the provision of healthcare, some of these difficulties include lifestyle diseases, aging conditions and unexpected challenges such us accidents. With this conditions, comes the burden of high cost of getting medical attention and ineffective health provision strategies that course disappointing health results and even sometimes leading to deaths (Laura et al., 2013). The effects of telemedicine cannot be underestimated; the application of technology has brought revolutionized changes in the health sector. HealthCare facilities can now obtain full information from patients by using logging and tracking technological tools such as the weight management app. These apps work through the user’s input and sends the information directly to the healthcare providers (Laura et al., 2013). The primary requirement for adequate telemedicine system is that the proposed solutions should address a particular challenge felt when administering disease management support. Two decades ago, Telemedicine was recommended to provide support for people with diabetes to help them reach desirable results [Lau13] . But it should be noted that there is very few evidence that shows that all of the systems is effective. The provision of care for the people with diabetes is a precursor of effective health care for different people suffering from chronic diseases (Laura et al., 2013) Telemedicine incorporates innovative measures that can solve the problems associated with chronic disease. Patients and healthcare providers can share information using GPRS enabled mobile phones which are owned by the vast majority hence making the health information accessibility very fast (Laura et al., 2013). In the quest to provide better health care, researchers have embarked on developing and testing technological applications that can impact behavior change among the patients. In their research paper, Baumer (2012 developed Virtual Environments for Raised Awareness (VERA), A smartphone application that gives the user a chance to record and share their medical information and share with different people at different locations. The application appearance when logged in appears as below: A. B. C. When an individual wants to take a health-related decision say to engage in physical exercise, he or she opens the application and takes the photo relating to exercise like in image A [Lau16] . Then the application will prompt the user to indicate if the action was taken, as in B above. If the user accepts, is taken to C where now can see all health actions taken by friends. The application’s primary intention is to track and create social influence [Lau16] . By integrating the Intelligence Management System, created by gathering information from mobile phones and wireless network to provide emergency services somedevices can sense a state or the condition of a patient by a touch (Joo et al., 2015). . These are achieved by just recognizing the pulse rate of the patient. With this kind of information, the health facilitator can be notified and decide on the appropriate measures. Pervasive approach to healthcare information provides the window for clinicians and doctors to access their patient's health information of the past and even present (Joo et al., 2015). The healthcare official will be able to provide very efficient services and be in a position to understand his or her client much better (Joo et al., 2015). . Having all the records of the patient will mean that the health provider evades some of the mistakes caused by the clinician ignorance. Researchers can also access such kind of data so that they can be able to develop different ways of approaching health issues. Web and Multimedia Behavior Changes Interventions Web-based interventions are defined as a self-directed intervention plan that is implemented by ways of dogmatic internet program executed through a website and utilized by the users in need of physical and mental health assistance(Medicine20.com, 2016). The interventions are designed to provide a positive change through knowledge improvement by harnessing and understanding of good health information materials by use of Web-based materials (Medicine20.com, 2016). The major components of web-based interventions involve program scope, employment of multimedia, highly interactive online activities and effective feedback. The main clinical areas that have given rise to web-based interventions is self-management especially from people who are diagnosed with long-term chronic diseases such as heart diseases; the second one is health promotion which involves smoking cessation, and the last one is mental disorders(Healthleadersmedia, , 2016) . The majority of research lists the advantages of individual’s independence at the choice of the patient, with the ability to develop sustainable medical care services (Varshney, 2016). Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change(TTM) lay the foundation of changes, which specifies sections of a given population based on where they are found in the process of change. The name trans-model is used to show how TTM uses stages that are very deep in psychotherapy (Joo et al., 2015). Much evidence has been presented to support trends of applications of TTM. The one that is most readily available involved computerized TTM which establishes messages to people in need. It should also be remembered that there is intensive ongoing research on application with more development coming up with highly computerized multimedia devices (Joo et al., 2015). .Any notable positive effect in a population whether small is treated with utmost decency. When assumed, the positive change may have long-lasting public health benefits. That is why the results of using web-based intervention for a given behavior change, is a cornerstone of public health (Joo et al., 2015). Habit Change and Social Behavior Health providers have found their way of making sure that patients are kept engage like never before to assist them overcoming challenges posed by diseases such as obesity and addiction of substances such as alcohol and other drug abuse related addictions (Laura et al., 2013) . To achieve desirable results that can lead to a happier life for the patients, technology through technological tools have been brought on board to shape the behavior of the affected individuals (Anon, 2016) . At the heart of modern healthcare systems is the new urge of changing patients ‘behaviors’. A shift from the traditional view point where it was more of reactive than preventive and opposite of the modern methods that aim to provide management of even chronic diseases. According to the article written by (Healthleadersmedia.com, 2016), almost two out of three American citizens have access or own a smartphone. The assertion is confirmed by (Anon, 2016) who conquers that the trend of using smartphone has been growing on a high accelerated rate since the year 2011 to 2014. Many Americans and the general world population is finding this phones to be more appealing especially because of the harnessed and multi-functional applications found in these phones. The engagement of patients is said today to be the pillar of health care system because of the advantages of these techniques on observable results by health practitioners especially in providing healing at a low cost. For instance, in recent research conducted by the University of Southampton Laura et al.,2013), the adult’s health behavior was able to be deduced and necessary intervention taken by observing their physical activities and response through a downloadable physical activities observation smart phone application (laura et al.,2013), . The table below summarizes the percentage findings of the health behavior of 19 participants; There is systematic evidence that vividly shows that some of the preventable deaths reported, most of them have been as a result of lack of patient engagement. With close to 40% of all deaths recorded in the United States of America has a bearing of conditions or lifestyle that is modifiable if the patient would have progressively been engaged [Lau13]. Some of these conditions are but not restricted to, obesity, high or low blood pressure, smoking, and diabetes. All victims of these conditions must be educated on how to manage their body (Laura et al., 2013).. . To educate them, the healthcare needs an efficient communication means systems that will enable quick collection of feed. To reach out to a greater number of patients, healthcare providers have started incorporating Information Communication Technology to bring about behavior change in the patients (Lauira et al., 2013). Mobile texting can help to reduce the chances of an individual becoming addicted to smoking. Because by the individual texting a counseling expert, the gap that could have been otherwise caused the patient to go back to the former habits of smoking will be filled. By doing this each time the patient feels acute urge to smoke, will have increased chances of succeeding in the programs designed to fight the condition. The healthcare provider, also maybe be able to get first-hand information about the patient and designed mitigation measures to help the patient get through the healing process(Healthleadersmedia, 2016) based intervention have been developed to provide interventions that are more likely to affect the patient's behavior positively. A case is a website named, becomeanx.org that has been designed to help those who have been affected by the effects of Tobacco (Healthleadersmedia, 2016). Apart from websites and mobile texting, some applications can help the patients overcome health challenges. The only problem being that some of the software do not include much-needed details. Tracking devices come in handy when tracking the activities of the patients (Healthleadersmedia, 2016). The healthcare facilitator can receive the necessary information and monitor the patients' activities by noting any behavior changes in the provided health program. Individual Difference and Personalization The current society is considered highly modernized with societal trends and technological advancement that aid majority of the people to undergo their day to day life with less physical efforts with accessing easily to a lot of food. The modernized society experiences much comfortable life thanks to advancements made in technology. However, as much as the benefits of this lifestyle are quite evident, there is a downside especially the cropping in of lifestyle diseases such as obesity (Maurits et al.,2016). In their journal entitled, ‘Development of a Computer-tailored Nutrition and Physical Activity Intervention for Lower-educated Women of Dutch, Turkish and Moroccan origin using Content Matching and Ethnic Identity Tailoring’ (Romeike et al., 2016) states that Unhealthy eating habits and physical activity trends are highly dominant in Western countries.Most of the affected come from the people with lower level of education and ethnic minority groups. Hence the need for development and promotion of healthy diet and physical exercise practices that can cover a large number of individuals is required (Romeike et al., 2016). The persuasive technology has been employed to change individuals’ attitude (Hawkins et al., 2008). To achieve this, ‘tailoring,' a term that is used to mean the creation of communications whereby, information of a given person is applied to determine the particular content to be received, the scope surrounding the trend and who will be presented with the information using which channel? (Hawkins et al., 2008), is used. Overall, tailoring aims to enhance the relevance of the information presented and thus to produce greater preferred changes in relation to response to the communications (Hawkins et al., 2008). Technology advancement is required to support life-long and real-time observations of the patients (Anon, 2016). To achieve all these electronic devices for keeping health records and smartphones that if used well can cut down costs and unnecessary delays. Smartphones are very convenient to carry around hence health applications found in these devices are of high benefit in changing behavior of the user (Anon, 2016). Some of the personalized applications that have been developed include that one that helps in managing individual's stress, controlling user's diet and providing management from chronic conditions (Anon, 2016). It is clearly that persuasive technology such as the use of mobile applications can change human behavior. However, the process of designing and implementing technological process should be carried out with after an intensive research. With continued technological advancement, much is anticipated to happen in healthcare, but the clinicians and doctors should be keen enough to see through the lens of that which is relevant. Behavior change is a gradual process, with that in mind; we can't expect best of the results in a day or two. Programs and application developers should be encouraged to come up with applications that will provide and facilitate behavior changes, through carrying out well thought out researchers with the assistance of health providers. 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