MEDICAL AND HEALTHCARE
Medical and Healthcare: Technology Trend in Healthcare
Technology has transformed the way humans are living lives in recent times, including healthcare. With the use of artificial intelligence and robotics, healthcare professionals aim to infuse technology in almost impossible and unimaginable ways to work towards the best patient care possibilities and reduce medical errors. This paper aims at detailing one of the recent progressions in healthcare and the benefits and limitations it could likely pose.
Application in Various Healthcare Settings
Telemedicine is one of the leading trends, especially after the advent of the pandemic in the past two years that has revolutionized the way healthcare operates. The two-way communication between physicians and patients in a synchronous manner helps collect and track patient health data conveniently with handy devices like personal mobiles and laptops (Alotaibi & Federico, 2017). One of the most iconic trends in telemedicine is remote patient monitoring (RPM) that involves contacting, communicating, and monitoring the patient over a video call with software that helps record and track a patients data over time.
RPM could be applied in many healthcare settings, wherever the patient is present, for instance, his home, school, or workplace. The use of smart devices and processes has been in use for its application, along with an active internet connection. Patient monitoring tools are needed to collect patient data and keep a close eye on its physical, vital signs. There are consumer-friendly wearable devices such as watches to keep track of blood pressure and pulse rate etc., a dashboard for gaining a thorough review of the health data, an online patient portal that gives the advantage of accessibility from computer or mobiles anytime for enhancing doctor-patient interactivity, anytime video interaction, data reporting in the form of charts and graphs for helping the doctors be equipped with patient data, and support for integration with hospitals and relevant professionals for future recommendations of medications or interventions (Software Advice, n.a.; Top Flight Apps, 2020).
RPM has positively affected medical and patient care, showing positive clinical outcomes, especially for patients with hypertension, obtrusive pulmonary disease, back pain, and obesity (Noah et al., 2018). Patients do need to have appropriate education for wearable devices; clinicians must be able to diagnose effectively and theoretically produce the results with the integration of commuter related software for the specific device that the patient is wearing; results are showing positive outcomes for certain segments of populations more as compared to other segments. It could be because various types of research conducted earlier are for different types of devices and populations, such as elderly people with hypertension. There is still a need for more studies to provide solid evidence for promising clinical outcomes and the effectiveness of certain RPM devices for particular populations.
Benefits and Limits of RPM
It is chiefly beneficial for reducing hospitalization re-admissions and length of stay for the patients. Some of the major benefits of RPM encompass early detection of the illnesses, being aptly equipped with the continuous monitoring of the patients, improving prevention for ailments to worsen, reducing mortality rates, inducing lesser costs for hospitalizations, producing more precise readings with technological devices, minimizing human errors, bettering the clinical outcomes and enhancing patient safety, enabling care coordination, inducing efficiency into clinical practice, convenient tracking of patients daily activities with easily available devices, providing more opportunities of emergency medical care, and offering lesser mobility for the disabled patients, etc. (Malasinghe, Ramzan & Dahal, 2017).
The biggest limitation of telemedicine is its irreplaceability for in-person clinical visits. The doctor can examine the patient physically by checking his eye color, pulse rate, etc. (Saljoughian, 2021). Some patients are not aware of...
…present in large quantities, and less access to healthcare facilities is observed due to low socioeconomic status (Nelson & Lang-Lindsey, 2020). Since social workers are usually employed in multidisciplinary teams working closely with such communities, they play an integral role in eliminating cultural and linguistic barriers to healthcare. Deployment of telemedicine by social workers in these communities, in terms of education and awareness of the patients, is of countless worth.The amalgamation of technological evolution and societal changes is critical for future social work since demographic changes, and geographical implications on health conditions are to be scrutinized for better prescriptions in personalized care. As social workers are close with these communities, they know peoples attitudes, beliefs, cultural cues, perceptions about medical intervention, and spiritual connections that would help place telemedicine and its usefulness. There are four particular areas for RPM integration that should be made known to social workers for better outcomes: competencies, RPM sensors and wearable, mobile technologies with synchronous and asynchronous availabilities, and implications for behavioral health (Hilty et al., 2021).
The social workers familiarity with certain types of telemedicine methods and their usage should be well informed to educate the patients for decent healthcare delivery. The overall healthcare delivery cost could be decreased quite fairly once its proper implementation is understood. Social workers need to be conscious of professional standards and ethical guidelines in certain communities. Research has indicated some personal experiences of the social workers who have mentioned the sudden and extreme high need for telemedicine and RPM in pandemic times which was not known before. Still, since its needs arose faster than expected, the steep learning curve in technological medical application with its legal and ethical considerations rose for social workers in recent times (Cristofalo, 2021). Generalized and specialized training is essential for adopting special techniques for collecting,…
References
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Casale, P. N., Vyavahare, M., Coyne, S., Kronish, I., Greenwald, P., Ye, S., Deland, E., & Fleischut, P. M. (2021). The Promise of Remote Patient Monitoring: Lessons Learned During the COVID-19 Surge in New York City. American Journal of Medical Quality: The Official Journal of the American College of Medical Quality, 36(3), 139–144. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.JMQ.0000741968.61211.2bCristofalo, M.A. (2021). Telehealth, friend and foe for health care social work. Qualitative Social Work, 21(1-2), 399-403. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473325020973358Hilty, D. M., Armstrong, C. M., Edwards-Stewart, A., Gentry, M. T., Luxton, D. D., & Krupinski, E. A. (2021). Sensor, Wearable, and Remote Patient Monitoring Competencies for Clinical Care and Training: Scoping Review. Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science, 1–26. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41347-020-00190-3
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Morales-Botello, M.L., Gachet, D., Buenaga, M., Aparicio, F., Busto, M.J. & Ascanio, J.R. (2021). Chronic patient remote monitoring through the application of big data and internet of things. Health Informatics Journal, 27(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/14604582211030956Nelson, D.D. & Lang-Lindsey, K. (2020). Rural healthcare and Telehealth: The importance of social work departments at HBCUs in developing a competent workforce in the rural South. Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship, 12(3), 39-46.
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Software Advice. (n.a.). Remote patient monitoring software. https://www.softwareadvice.com/remote-patient-monitoring/Top Flight Apps. (2020, September 30). How to develop a remote patient monitoring app for healthcare providers. https://topflightapps.com/ideas/how-to-develop-a-remote-patient-monitoring-app/
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