Technology’s Impact on Population Health
Do you know that technology has an impact on population health? Massive changes in the healthcare industry have been brought about by technology. Patients nowadays can access some of the best treatment tools as a result of technology. It has also led to procedures resulting in less pain and quick recovery among the patients. Advances in technology have fed the explosion of wearable devices and patient self-monitoring. Nurses can leverage this technology to promote healthy lifestyles and improved compliance with self-care and monitoring in the following ways. For example, digitization of health records has reduced the use of bulky paper files which sometimes catches dust. Storing of data and management has become more accessible and quicker, thus leading to better clinical and more informed medical decisions. Electronic medical records have made it easier for nurses by providing summaries of patient records. Lab reports and prescriptions have been made easier via technology in the health sector. Sharing of information between labs among the specialists has been improved. Knowledge of patient health from one institution can be shared with the medical institution at ease.
On the other hand, do you know that there are vast quantities of consumer data available today? This data includes the healthy lifestyle program data whereby individuals benefit from raising and coping with stress skills are disseminated. For example, every time you use a grocery store loyalty card, data about what you purchased is collected, analyzed, and saved. These data in the hands of population health professionals can contribute to the creation of healthy lifestyle programs. However, the same data in the hands of health insurance plans could lead to higher insurance costs or denial of insurance.
In totality, technology has revolutionized the health sector. Data has been stored for future references for analyzing the previous health conditions of a patient, health programs such as healthy lifestyle programs have impacted through the improvement of the health of patients. Food in groceries has been taken care of whereby data from them have been kept for future reference relating to the nutrition of the patient.