Care Issues with Informatics application - Essay Example

In this case, the 80 year old male patient’s condition has worsened and the key issues those are making the instance a challenging one are: 1. Infrastructural limitations 2. Non availability of specialised medical human resource at the local centre 3. Costs. Although the centerpiece of this case is a medical exigency but the case also highlights the crucial role that the technology is now playing in health care. Ever since the invention of monaural stethoscope in early nineteenth century, technology’s role in assisting clinicians in their noble pursuits has progressively been increasing (Sood, 2006).

Telemedicine/telehealth is one such disruptive technology that has the potential to address all the above listed three issues and in many countries it has already started influencing the way ßhealth care services are delivered. Researchers have defined telemedicine as the use of telecommunications technologies to provide medical information and services (Mair & Whitten, 2000). Telemonitoring, mHealth and telesurgery are some of the promising and upcoming applications of telemedicine that aim to address the issues pertaining to the shortage of infrastructural and specialized medical human resources.

The present case can also be effectively and efficiently handled with the help of applications like telemonitoring and mHealth. Figure 1. gives an idea about the utility of mHealth, it indicates that mHealth can enable the specialist to monitor the patient’s condition while he/she is at his/ her home or is being transported to the hospital. Telemonitoring systems have already proved to be feasible and acceptable by clinicians. The issues encountered in the context of present case can be easily resolved with the help of commercial telemonitoring systems.

Two such commercially available systems are i) TeleMedic Systems’ Vitalink3 (VitalLink, 2009) ii) Nonin’s Onyx II model 9560 (Advancing Telemedicine, 2009). VitalLink enables