Investigating the Impact of Information Technology on a Career - Term Paper Example

of the of the 29 October Introduction The transformation of the healthcare industry utilizing Information Technology is continuously updating. The healthcare sector’s investment in Information Technology is not up to the mark for at least a decade, as history shows that the health care industry has adopted the Information Technology late. As the increasing costs of healthcare intimidate the competitive advantage of developed countries, ways to use information technology to organize costs are being recognized. Major government projects focus on the improvement of information technology adoption and shrink costs while protecting patient privacy. Requirement for researchers to facilitate practitioners recognize how information technology can advance hospitals’ productivity is evident. As people are becoming more and more aged, population is becoming a challenge in social and economic sector worldwide. In the United States, people with age over 65 are expected to hit 70 million by 2030. This figure is doubled as compared to 35 million in 2000. Health care in the context of Information technology has become an obsession globally. These increments are been observer globally. The old aged people having diseases, requiring constant monitoring and medication and need to visit the hospitals and clinics on a regular basis. If the disease is identified at the initial stage by health monitoring techniques, the quality of life will be improved and many lives can be saved. At the same time, investigating the disease can reduce the cost and resources which are utilized for the treatment of a patient. The cost related to health care is also an emerging problem (Durresi et al. 211-218). For example, expenditures in the United States will grow to 15.9% for the health care from the GDP of $2.6 trillion by 2010 ("Keynote "). The Research and education along with the clinical practice is the key element facilitating the healthcare realm. The use of online screening tools can be accessed from the Internet is increasing. People are keener to find information regarding health and diseases from the Internet instead of visiting the doctor, which is a long and time consuming process (Koivunen et al. 1141-1150). 2 Health Care Staff Computer Usability The usability of computers systems is always an issue. The staff is not motivational to use computing devices installed in hospitals and medical resources. The research on the individual factors on health care staff’s computer use in psychiatric hospitals was conducted by (Koivunen et al. 1141-1150). The aim of the study was to examine the individual factors of health care staff related with computer use in psychiatric hospitals. One of the factors highlighting the optimal use of computing systems was also investigated. For calculating information and attributes, structured questionnaire are used. The result concluded that the nurses having more experience in using and operating the computing devices are more interested rather than those who have less experience. The male staff including the administrative staff has also participated more often in the tasks related to computer operations. Emphasis must be given to the staff capacity and understanding to deal with the computer systems installed in the hospital premises (Koivunen et al. 1141-1150). 3 Information Technology in Health Care As per Moore’s law the cost for the given amount of computing power become semi for every two years. This also implies on the cell phones which are getting more advance and cheaper. The information and communication technology is not able to cope up with the healthcare information technology with the pace. In fact, storage issues are created due to a vast amount of patient records to be stored (Wollersheim 4-6). 3.1 Information Technology Health Care Systems For a secure and personalized and quality health care, ubiquitous health care systems are launched. These systems are envisioned to provide reliable, cost effective, privacy preserving and quality health care. The systems were to improve the quality of life in general. The name of the system was ‘I-living’ developed by the researchers located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The objective of this system was to provide medical services of the patients at home (Durresi et al. 211-218). (Sawai and Yoshida 34-42) defined an algorithm to analyze and monitor the state of the solitary elderly persons at home. The installation of sensors is conducted to for continuous monitoring of the patient activities. Algorithm is based on the ‘ORing’ simple operation in which all sensor output signals are considered by analyzing that the sensors will respond for a long time of no movement of the patient is observed. It was concluded that if no movement of the patient is identified for 2 hours and 15 minutes, there is a problem which needs to be further investigated. Smart medical home prototype was introduced at Center for future health (CFH) at the University of Rochester. The prototype consists of infrared sensors, computing devices, bio sensors and surveillance cameras. The objective of this prototype along with all these devices is to provide an advisory service by implementing a provision of an interface for the patient to communicate with the health care expert. The system provides motion and activity monitoring, pathogen detection, skin care, and personal health care recording for user-provider decision support (Durresi et al. 397 405). A study was conducted related to document and assess the experiences of 104 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in scheduling and implementing health information technology systems. The topics which were addressed in the planning grantee activity were: “Assessment of needs and goals, partnership issues, engagement of end users in planning called as Adoption. Experiences in field testing and implementation, partnership issues, interactions with end users, facilitating factors, issues that arose is the implementation. Facilitating factors for sustainability, assessment of IT impact, system modifications required, issues to resolve, and requirements for replication elsewhere is sustainability. Effects on implementation progress from organizational culture, organizational infrastructure and processes, senior management support, changes in partners’ commitment or roles, changes in external environment come under the heading of Internal and External factor”. Type Of Grantee Type of Health I.T Planning Implementation Value Total Decision support 18 29 18 65 Computerized provider order entry 11 15 9 34 Electronic prescribing 4 4 1 9 Electronic health records 21 22 2 45 Patient decision support 3 3 5 11 Results reporting 6 5 3 14 Data collection and summary 9 13 4 26 Data exchange and information 32 24 3 59 Knowledge retrieval systems 2 0 1 3 Communication systems 8 7 7 22 Mobile computing 1 6 2 9 Administrative 3 4 0 7 Other 1 1 0 2 Not specified 1 0 1 2 Average number of technologies per project 3.2 3.3 2.2 Fig 1.1 In Fig 1.1, score has been marked regarding the Information technology services related to the functions. Grantee is divided in to three categories i.e. Planning, Implementing and Value. The data was retrieved from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) master file of patient safety and projects and Grantee suggestion. The conclusion involves the production of rich information provided by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) was helpful to the health care providers. The qualitative information gathering can help to make decisions regarding the Information technology potential to the full extent in the Health care industry for the planning, implementation and evaluation process. Critical issues were acknowledged related to the evaluation conducted by the projects for Information Technology health systems. The technical issues are also involved which are faced by the grantees throughout the implementation and the shortfall of the evaluation design which is utilize by the implementation grants made attention by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and other policy makers . Study on the integrated system to provide data access via pervasive computing technologies was conducted by (Landry, Mahesh and Hartman 444-464). Pervasive systems enable the computing power and communication to be controlled by the employees, and available wherever it is needed. Routine work which is understood and described will be performed by the technology. Deskilled jobs will be gradually eliminated as well. Low level, hands-on jobs which are not easily performed by robots will only be continued. At the upper end of the scale, a variety of specialized, non-routine work in designing, developing, and maintaining the new systems, and some managerial jobs will continue. In healthcare, several types of jobs will be impacted. The first one will be the physicians. Evidence is already available, that the routine diagnoses performed by physicians can be done by a deskilled worker, with an expert system backed up by technology such as sensing and imaging devices. As this process spreads, the result, consistent with earlier arguments, should be a reduction in the total number of physicians, with replacement by deskilled workers. In turn, the deskilled workers themselves will eventually be eliminated, as patients access the systems directly. An issue, which initiates at this point, is the public acceptance of care administered by technology rather than by human beings .Driving public acceptance may be the rapidly rising costs associated with healthcare, assuming the systems we suggest providing cost savings. Possibly, and in line with experiences which have been reported in Great Britain, a system will emerge where those wealthy enough to pay privately for services by human. Physicians and related caregivers will continue to do so for some time into the future, while those unable to do so move to technological care more quickly. In considering this scenario, healthcare managers should recognize the dominant players in a market use innovative technologies to set themselves apart from the competition. This quest for technology has created a financial burden in the healthcare sector, with expensive technology being used even where it may not be appropriate, and no reduction in cost of highly paid professionals. In the disruptive innovation, technology 460 JHHSA SPRING 2005 model (Kenagy, Christensen, 2002) can be used to do the same work with less skilled staff, yielding entirely new business processes that can disrupt existing market leaders. Highly skilled professionals will need to totally retrain themselves for new jobs, in a situation where the technology may be used to either enhance or deskill their jobs. 4 Conclusion It is almost an axiom that efforts to predict the future almost always miss the mark. Assumption is, that it would be a mistake for those who are charged with leading healthcare and developing its leaders to ignore the signs we have identified. Radical change is coming, and those who attempt to ignore the evidence for it do so at their peril and that of their organizations. It is essential to point out, as well, that we have attempted to avoid the ethical and public implications of the future we envision. The integration of Information technology is rather a slow process but it is increasing as the time comes and the predictions on the current basis now available. Facing the social/ethical implications will be essential. If organizations do, in fact, change along the lines we imagine, what will be the ethical and societal problems associated with creating what is in effect a two-class society composed on one side by those with creative, challenging, highly-skilled jobs and at the other with those in deskilled, undesirable jobs . the technological haves and have-nots? And what will be the impact upon society if an extremely sizable proportion of all jobs, those which is automated are lost. It is exasperating to recognize, that such questions are rarely being asked, and to get a picture of the future in this respect, it becomes necessary to revolve to science fiction. In an optimistic note, for example, a world where virtually all work is done by computers. There is plenty of everything for free and citizen struggle for the opportunity to do what meaningful work remains because of its challenge. Perhaps we are evolving toward something which is similar to it, but without careful guidance of the process, the results may be far less positive. References Koivunen, Marita, et al. "The Impact of Individual Factors on Healthcare Staffs Computer use in Psychiatric Hospitals." Journal of clinical nursing 18.8 (2009): 1141-50. Print. Wollersheim, Dennis. The Impact of ICT on Healthcare and on Health Information Management. 38 Vol. Health Information Management Association of Australia Ltd, 2009. Print. "Keynote "Web. 11/27/2010 . Durresi, Arjan, et al. "Networked Biomedical System for Ubiquitous Health Monitoring." Mobile Information Systems 4.3 (2008): 211-8. Print. Sawai, Kazuyoshi, and Masaki Yoshida. "Algorithm to Detect Abnormal States of Elderly Persons for Home Monitoring." Systems & Computers in Japan 38.6 (2007): 34-42. Print. Durresi, Arjan, et al. "Network-Based Information Systems; Integrated Biomedical System for Ubiquitous Health Monitoring " 4658 (2007): 397 405. Print. Koivunen, Marita, et al. "The Impact of Individual Factors on Healthcare Staffs Computer use in Psychiatric Hospitals." Journal of clinical nursing 18.8 (2009): 1141-50. Print. Rix, Fred. "Dogs Tags for Virtual Sniffing." Illustration. Technology Review 110.4 (July 2007): 16. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 14 December 2007. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=25887648&site=ehost-live. Damberg, Cheryl L., et al. "Adopting Information Technology to Drive Improvements in Patient Safety: Lessons from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Health Information Technology Grantees." Health services research 44.2 (2009): 684-700. Print. Prahalad, C. K. (1999) "Changes in the Competitive Battlefield," Financial Times pp. p. 1. Landry, Brett J. L., Sathi Mahesh, and Sandra J. Hartman. "The Impact of the Pervasive Information Age on Healthcare Organizations." Journal of Health & Human Services Administration 27.4 (2005): 444-64. Print. Kenagy, John W and Clayton Christensen (2002) Disruptive Innovation: A new Diagnosis for Healthcare’s “Financial Flu Healthcare FinancialManagement (May): 62-66. Read More