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Digital Technology and Healthcare

Digital technology will eventually serve healthcare providers and clients as a communication abridge allowing consumers to get healthcare when and where they need it regardless of distance. Digital technology will help increase the client’s participation in their healthcare by closing communication gaps between clients and providers. Digital technology will help healthcare providers focus on the needs of the client while improving care and ultimately reducing cost. Digital technology can be intimidating but the benefits are great for client care and increase satisfaction allowing clients to better manage their own health. Digital technology will give clients more autonomy to manage their health while still having the support and guidance of experienced healthcare providers. New mobile health technology is emerging so quickly that client privacy and security are of great concern to both clients and healthcare providers. It is imperative these concerns be resolved before the implementation of new technology.

Many healthcare professionals believe digital technology has impacted the nursing profession in many ways and will continue to bring about changes in the delivery of care. Digital technology impacts the future of nursing because healthcare providers such as nurses must keep up with the new technological advances if they want to continue to practice in the healthcare profession. Technology may drive older nurses who are not technology driven into another profession or early retirement. Adaptation to new technology may be challenging and intimidating cause anxiety and fear in healthcare providers. The healthcare system is rapidly moving towards a technology driven era. In the near future healthcare providers will be forced to use more technology than in the past years or even months.

Technology relates to assessment in multiple ways. With modern technology it will be possible to monitor clients at home for longer periods of time without having to admit them into a clinic or hospital. Technology will change the form and location client assessment is performed. Having the ability to monitor the clients in the home sitting can provide better and more accurate information for the diagnosis and treatment of curtain medical conditions. For instance in clients with A-fib, 30 day EKG monitoring can be useful for the detection of this condition. Early detection of health problems may decrease the cost of care and suffering for clients. With the new technological advances it is realistic to consider mobile technology as part of the client’s plan of care. Technology will surely impact the way healthcare providers manage the clients care at home. The use of text messages for negative test results, electronic prescribing and electronic patient records will improve care, allowing health professionals to spend more time with each client, thus saving money. One meta-analysis reviewed several trials and reported overall modest evidence that text messaging has a positive impact on self-management and outcomes in conditions such as diabetes, asthma, and hypertension (Dicianno, Parmanto, Fairman, Crytzer, Yu, Parmana, Coughenour, Petrazzi, 2015).

Health care is growing increasingly complex, and most clinical research focuses on new approaches to diagnosis and treatment. In contrast, little effort has been targeted at the perfection of operational systems, client and medical safety. If medicine is to achieve major gains in quality, it must be transformed, and technology will play a key part, especially with respect to patient safety. Patient safety should be assured by extensive testing before implementation or placement into practice. Patient safety will continue to be assured with the reporting of glitches and continued testing of newly implemented technology.

The current research addressing the impact of mobile technology in client care focuses on healthcare outcomes, cost efficiency and accessibility. One of the biggest benefits reported by research of mobile health is time management. Physicians using mobile technology to treat clients, are finding more time in their day to help additional clients by limiting in-person office visits for when they’re absolutely necessary. The use of mobile health also allows instant access to a client’s Electronic Health Records. In selected facilities physicians are utilizing a mobile app, called eVisit, to facilitate online interactions with clients. Once a client has signed in to the hospital’s client portal and completed a questionnaire concerning their complaints, physicians can respond within minutes to provide care. If a prescription is required, the order can be submitted electronically to the client’s pharmacy.

Pros for using mobile technology include the ability of healthcare professionals to have access to multiple sources of data, including their clients’ activities over extended time periods. Mobile technology strives to be able to change the quality of public health care in general. For example, mobile tools can be used by diabetics in the management of their disease, thus changing the outcome and improving health. Better management of the disease can result in lower hospitalization rates for diabetic clients. Another benefit of mobile health is financial. Analysts suggest that the new mobile technology could save the health industry and its clients billions of dollars annually. Digital medical records allows healthcare providers to view the clients past medical history electronically. Digital medical records allows healthcare providers to monitor and trend labs, vitals, and visits to other healthcare providers, thus providing the client with better services and ultimately resulting in better outcomes. Mobile technology may soon become more available for use making it more affordable and convenient to both healthcare professionals and clients. Cons to the use of mobile technology include healthcare providers concern regarding overwhelming amounts of data to be assessed. A major concern for both clients and healthcare professional includes the loss of security and privacy of client information as well as the accuracy of the data obtained. Another major obstacle and concern will be the integration of technology into provider systems and its correct utilization.

Technology is being integrated into the hospitals and is being used daily to provide clients with health education. Hospitals utilize electronic discharge orders and education of admitting diagnosis and medications. Electronic technology is also being used to send medication orders directly to client’s pharmacy. Health technology is all around. Most smart phones can now be used to download applications related to healthcare. The provided article discussed some of the recent medical advances in digital technology including ambulatory EKG monitoring, PATRICIA and ear bud innovation for exercise. Mobile health applications promise both improvements in the quality of medical services and financial savings. Mobile health is still in the developmental stages, and it has some glitches to overcome. The integration of mobile health technology is inevitable, it is only a matter of when it will be implemented. Healthcare providers would be wise to embrace the new technology as it promises to facilitate and optimize client health.

Resources

Dicianno, E, B., Parmanto, B., Fairman, D. A., Crytzer, M. T., Yu, X. D., Parmana, G., Coughenour, D., Petrazzi, A. A. (2015). Perspectives on the evolution of mobile (mHealth) technologies and application to rehabilitation. American Physical Therapy Association. 95(3). DOI: 10.2522/ptj.201 30534

I found it both interesting and a little overwhelming at the numbers of apps out there for nurses and other medical professionals. The increased use of technology in nursing impacts us in many ways. The time invested in learning new software takes away from hands on care in hopes that it will eventually allow us to make better use of our time and ultimately patient care will benefit. Unfortunately, many of the newer charting systems seem geared more toward those things that increase hospital reimbursement and not with the nurse’s workload in mind. While these technological advances should make charting easier and less time consuming, I do not hear nurses saying how much more they have for hands on patient care. Some of the electronic charting has alerts set up that are routinely ignored by the nurse due to redundancies in the software. It is difficult to imagine working without the technology that we now have. With drug resources, lab values, assessment data, and clinical procedures all available on hand held electronic devices we definitely have an advantage and opportunity to increase the quality of care. On the other hand, do these resources make us less available to our patients? It seems like the more technology we have available, the more we are expected to do. So, do we really have more time for patient care and what is the quality of that care?
A study done by Free et al. (2013) on the effects of mobile technology using text messaging to patients using ARTs and smoking cessation programs supports that these types of interventions can increase adherence. Health-care providers need effective ways to encourage “health-care consumers” to make healthy lifestyle choices and to self-manage chronic diseases. The amount of information, encouragement and support that can be conveyed to individuals during face-to-face consultations or through traditional media such as leaflets is limited, but mobile technologies such as mobile phones and portable computers have the potential to transform the delivery of health messages (Free et al., 2013).
My only experience with technology and patient education is on a personal level. My husband is a diabetic and has an app suggested by his primary care provider. The app allows him to track blood glucose levels, insulin administration, carb counting, and exercise. He used is religiously when it was first introduced but the frequency decreased over time. His feelings were that it was too time consuming and he could not see the benefit from it.

Free, C., Phillips, G., Galli, L., Watson, L., Felix, L., Edwards, P.,…Haines, A. (2013). The effectiveness of mobile-health technology-based health behavior change or disease management interventions for health care consumers: A systematic review [Supplemental material]. PLOS Medicine, , . doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001362

As Kerry Dirk mentions in Navigating Genres, “when a situation is repeated, the prior responses are incorporated into that person’s response and follow this form for the responses to follow, therefore creating a new genre” (Dirk 252). This doesn’t mean genres can’t adapt or change, but it does mean that they all start from one response that is mimicked in all future responses. When society saw it fit to establish emergency response units, someone set the standard of how communication should take place within that community, thus establishing the genre. Today that genre still exists and is even more specific than before. With multiple different types of emergency response units, each have a slightly different genre under the overall umbrella of the emergency response community. The fire service community is one part of that community that has developed a very specific genre within its discourse community.

Dirk goes on to state, “once a recurring situation is recognized, responses to that situation can be guided by past responses” (Dirk 252). Fire fighter call logs have taken a form that is specific to their genre for this reason. After analyzing so many different situations in the the past, their discourse community has come up with the most effective way of documenting emergency call logs that follow a specific format. This basic format is followed by everyone in the community and has multiple different aspects. First off, the call log is headed by what type of problem that is being reported, whether it’s a medical aid, structure or wild land fire, or an unknown problem. It continues to provide information about the dispatcher receiving the call, their name, and the priority of the call. The highest priority is priority one, which means there’s an immediate need for emergency personnel, and moves down in rank based on the nature of the call. Records and notes of the call the dispatcher receives is what follows next and he or she does their best job to note as much relevant information. This is important for recording keeping, but also in providing the emergency response crews as much information about the scene they are going to as possible. In addition, the notes that are taken must best done so in a timely manner and the use of abbreviations and acronyms are commonly used. For example, the abbreviation VEH is used to refer to a vehicle, where ADV is used to refer to the word advised or advised that. Furthermore, the address of where the call originated from, as well as the location to where firefighters are responding to are present on the call log. Lastly, every call log has an incident number associated with it in order to reference that call and for fire personnel to use when completing an incident report form once they’ve returned from the call.

Incident report forms are completed for every call firefighters respond to. They contain the basic information, such as date and time, up to very specific information. These reports must be completed in full with the most amount of detail as possible. Each incident report will include the incident number and either the fire Captain or Chief that was present at the scene. Furthermore, it does outline who responded to the call, such as certain departments, especially if there is more than one. However, different fire departments can have different incident report forms. All follow the basic outline that is apart of their genre in the fire service, but may report on different aspects to which they responded to. For example, departments in the foothills of a forest will have a different incident report than departments that deal primarily with inner cities. The department near the forest will focus on wild land fires and their report will be more directed to the concern of fighting wildfires. Their reports can include terrain types, types of fuel such as brush or trees and what kind of vegetation they are. In addition, they can include the cause of the fire with regards to it being a fire caused by lightening, arson, or smoking just to name a few. They also will include the type of resources that was assigned to combat the fire. This can include different type of trucks, whether hand crews were used or not, or if there was any kind of aerial support. While departments that operate mainly in cities or urban environments will include some of the same aspects in their reports such as officer in charge, the location, and maybe even the type of equipment that was used one scene, their incident reports will include slightly different information. Since majority of calls to the fire department are medical aid calls, they will have more emphasis on the medical conditions that were possibly treated. They also include the reason for the call, if it was medical aid or if it was a structure fire or possibly an alarm sounding.

Works Cited

City of Golden, Colorado. “Fire Incident Report.” Web.

http://sitetools.cityofgolden.net/files/wildfirereport.pdf

Dirk, Kerry, “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Eds. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. Parlor Press, 2010. 249-262. Web. http://writingspaces.org/essays.

Weinstein, Adam. “911 Call Log.” 29 July 2014. Web.

http://gawker.com/911-call-logs-past-legal-cases-add-new-details-to-prof-1612696037

Williamsburg Fire Department Incident Report. Web.

http://xls.control3.net/r/run-sheet-williamsburg-fire-department-e800.html

Visit https://www.pramp.com/

John Swales, the author of “The Concept of Discourse Communities” states that a discourse community meets six criteria, community goals, intercommunication mechanisms, communication purpose, genre, lexis, and membership diversity.  Genre, in the field of composition, rhetoric, and discourse communities has a much broader definition than what people typically define genre as. Within the arguably largest discourse community of Facebook, the community often shapes the writing using the common genres that include one’s homepage, news feed, and private or direct messaging.

Kerry Dirk, the author of the article “Navigating Genres”  quotes Carolyn Miller, a professor of technical communication that “a rhetorically sound definition of genre must be centered…on the action it is used to accomplish.”  Genres are like tools to appropriately aid people in specific situations, communities of discourse, and everyday life.

The general purpose of the Facebook community involves the free flow of information sharing.  However, the specific genres within the community hold individual purpose depending on what genre is used.  The purposes that the “homepage” and “news feed” serves the Facebook community are similar but also different.  They are similar in the fact that they both largely function off of the infamous Facebook question, “what’s on your mind?.”  Through this single question sparks limitless global sharing and communication on limitless topics or ideas.   They are also intertwined because whatever one decides to share or post on the news feed will also be posted to their homepage and vice versa, as long as the posting option is set to public.  The differences between the genre is that the homepage is personalized and serves a purpose of social acceptance through personal expression.  One typically constructs their homepage in a way that would be intriguing and socially acceptable in order to increase their number of friends.

The private or direct messaging genre serves a purpose defined in and of the genre itself.  People private message information that they only want to convey to the specific respondent.  Private messaging allows the user to communicate using any desired lexis or formality free from public assessment.

All communication on Facebook within every genre is mostly informal unless the purpose of a specific page deems otherwise.  An example of a Facebook page that would use formal communication and lexis would include a business that uses social media for advertisement and promotional purposes, in which formality is important in order to get the desired message across.  For all other genres like the news feed, homepage, and even private messaging use generally informal means of communication and a unique lexis.  Examples of lexis  that are specific to the Facebook community include:

-FB  (When referring to the Facebook platform) e.g. “I saw it on FB”

– DM  (Direct Message) e.g. “Just DM me the address”

-Tag  (Notifies specific people of your activity) e.g. “I tagged you in my post, did you see it?”

The other lexis that are widely used but not specific to the Facebook community is a mostly text based lingo, abbreviating words such as oh my God(OMG), laugh out loud(LOL), and talk to you later(TTYL) to name a few.

The genres of Facebook shape the writing of the community in an open and either informal or formal way.  The homepage, news feed, and private messaging genres meet the purpose, values, and beliefs within the Facebook community.  Although, these purposes, values, and beliefs are relative to the individual community member, the genres allow the discourse community to consistently achieve the core community goal of information sharing in a free flow form.

References:

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Eds. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. Parlor Press, 2010. 249-262.

Swales, John. “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings.  Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.

Facebook.com. “homepage. News Feed.” Bruce Kincaid, September 2, 2015

Facebook Slang. (n.d.). Retrieved September 2, 2015, from http://slangit.com/terms/facebook