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Technology And Healthcare

By: Caroline Tapp-McDougall

Today, we Google for medical information, push for IT solutions to make patient care safer and cheaper, and we expect instant results. The challenges for payers, consumers, and health professionals alike in this rapidly-exploding high tech world are multi-faceted. What’s efficient and effective? What’s affordable? What’s ethical? And perhaps, most importantly, what are we comfortable and willing to use? Healthcare consumers want more information and the big questions as healthcare technology continues to go ‘live’ are:

• Can we still maintain excellence in patient care?
• How can we support health professionals as they’re encouraged to become technology- friendly?
• What offerings are worth pursuing and funding and which ones are merely ‘gadgets and gizmos?’

Here are a few of the latest and greatest innovations that are ready to ride the wave if we’ll have them.

Mobile And Wireless
Research in the British Medical Journal suggests that a quarter of physicians currently use mobile devices and that by the end of 2005, the number will be up to about 30 per cent. This trend is attributed by some as a result of younger doctors who are more proficient in computer use entering practice. Why are they using hand-helds? Reasons include:

• Patient info – tracking and clinical results
• Point-of-care assistance – drug info, clinical guidelines, patient education
• Research – data collection
• Admin – electronic prescribing, tracking schedules
• Education – notes from lectures, presentations

iPods And Radiology
Radiologists are not listening to music – they’re looking at pictures as they utilize iPods to tackle the complexities of managing medical images. Today, codeveloper Osman Ratib, of UCLA, estimates that 5,000 professionals are using his osiriX software to display and manipulate patient images. In this application, Ratib, who realized his iPod had more spare storage than his laptop, has transformed the iPod into an exciting, portable plug-and-play storage device that facilitates patient care.

e-prescribing
The technology that allows doctors to etransfer prescriptions straight from the office to the pharmacy has significant benefits. Think of the potential to eliminate millions of calls from pharmacists to doctors for clarification of indecipherable or unclear prescriptions. Of note, however, with offers of support, free equipment, software, and other incentives, physicians are being tempted to get on the e-prescribing bandwagon. While this sounds glamorous, there’s bound to be a new set of errors and questions and the need for a system of checks and balances as in traditional prescribing.

Life-saving Bathroom Scales
Some clinicians are prescribing blood cuffs and weight scales that can transmit readings from a patient’s home to a healthcare facility. These devices are wireless and transmit to a phone hub. When a patient stands on the scale, if the data trigger an alarm, nurses call patients to figure out if they need to change medication, visit an outpatient clinic, or modify behaviour in other ways. The goal is not just to keep patients healthier, but also to cut health costs by cutting down the need for expensive hospitalizations and services.

The Electronic Pill Box
Much more than just a helper that assists home-based patients with organizing their medicine, web-enabled electronic pillboxes allow for medication monitoring, early intervention and patient-specific enquiries such as:

• Blood glucose levels
• Side effects
• Overall well-being
• Safety alerts

Still expensive and in the early stages of consumer acceptance, these pill-boxes may solve that ‘I’ve forgotten to take my medicine’ syndrome while offering a plethora of other safety and attention- getting features.

Embracing Tomorrow Studies of how IT is used in medicine have shown that while doctors and nurses are most resistant to the use of information technology, they are the ones who are most central to making it happen. While many are now comfortable with, for example, hand-helds and computer records, there’s still a huge resistance to learning how to use these. Behavioural issues might dominate, but at the centre of a l l automation beats an electronic heart. If that heart doesn’t dependably do what it’s supposed t o , health professionals just won’t use it.

Caroline Tapp-McDougall is the publisher of ‘Solutions: Canada’s Family Guide to Home Health Care and Wellness’ and the author of ‘The Complete Canadian Eldercare Guide.’

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