Healthcare Information Technology Trends
Healthcare has not been left behind in the application of information technology for increased efficiency and increased quality of healthcare. The general trend in healthcare is to make quality healthcare accessible to as many people as possible in the shortest time possible. To achieve this, technologies such as telehealth, wearables, IoT and artificial intelligence have been employed to make data and information sharing and analysis easier and fast. These technologies ensure there is an effective clinical decision support and patient monitoring. The continued use of these technologies has the capacity to improve nursing practice by ensuring there is effective patient-centred care and healthcare delivery is efficient.
However, there is an inherent risk in the application of information technology in healthcare. The use of IT in healthcare leads to the collection of huge amounts of patient data, and when such data is computerized, there is a security and privacy risk. The potential benefit of using IT is that the data collected make patient care easier and the assessment of healthcare outcomes. However, such data can be accessed by third parties, especially through security breaches. Data breaches present a privacy and security issue in that hackers can use the data to blackmail patients into doing all sort of things.
The most promising technological trends include telehealth and wearables. Telehealth is widely being used today and has increased access to healthcare. Wearables, on the other hand, are used to track patients and are widely used in healthcare research as well as in the management of different medical conditions. These promising trends will increase efficiency and patient care outcomes. Wearables can, for example, be used to track patients suffering from diabetes on their exercising schedules.