Technological Risks in Healthcare

Technological Risks in Healthcare

This paper analyzes the risk associated with the rising technology in healthcare

Risks Associated With the Rise in Technology

The use of sophisticated health technology in hospitals is expected to minimize mistakes and enhance the quality of care, but expanded use of health IT technology entails its own set of risks for health care providers. Theoretically, moving to EHRs ought to change everything. Instead of a dynamic storage system, many networks do not have interconnectedness, which means that they cannot communicate with others (Jones, 2018). This lack of contact can often endanger the safety of patients.

Despite the rise of electronic health records (EHR), the safe and reliable handling of patient information is becoming more difficult for hospitals (Krummel, 2019). Clinical staff and business associates may place patients in danger by data entry errors. Issues that involve the unintended insertion of patient data into the wrong medical record, pre-population models with information for which is not essential to a patient, or lack of details due to system problems and data availability (Jones, 2018). To prevent these issues, hospitals must analyze their data entry process with their EHR systems.

Although a central point is beneficial for all details, over dependency can have significant consequences if bandwidth or communication issues arise (Krummel, 2019). Clinicians often reduce their efforts or shirk their responsibilities when an automated device performs the same task. The use of technology has been proposed to convince the human mind to turn tasks and associated duties over to the automated machine. This mental transition decreases the person’s diligence in conducting the same task on his own.

The “auto-complete” feature for drug names following the first few letters, for instance, is a design method that has always contributed to the selection of the first, yet wrong, technology option. The use of 4 letters creating a list of possible medication names will minimize these errors.

References

Jones Jr, J. (2018). Assessing Data Security Risks Associated with Emergence of Information Technology in Health Care Industry (Doctoral dissertation, Northcentral University).

Krummel, T. M. (2019). The Rise of Wearable Technology in Health Care. JAMA network open, 2(2), e187672-e187672.