It appears that information technology is finally ready to be implemented in the health care field. I predict that health information technology will be one of most researched topic in the next 10 years because IT has been proved to increased productivity in other industries. Our health care delivery system calls for technology to increase both production efficiency and allocation efficiency. Out of all apps introduced in this article, I found that patients may be more interested in iTriage and pillbox apps. iTriage can give patients some information about their symptoms and treatments before they visit hospitals or clinics. pillbox can help patients identify an unknown pill. One of the biggest concern for health care apps is the privacy issues. I think it was the main reason to impede the development of new apps. One potential solution is the collaboration between health care apps developers and online security companies. For example, paypal has an industry-leading technology to secure online monetary transaction. The technology can also be used to transfer health care information. Thus, apps with paypal technology will be able to prevent the leakage of communication between patients and physicians. One thing I noticed is the lack of apps designed for the elderly population, especially for the oldest old. They have been assumed to be reluctant to accept technological applications.My belief is that the elderly population have not embraced the IT applications because those applications in the current market were not user friendly to them. In the future, it is health service researchers' responsibility to identify the most useful apps for this population and promote them.
This is a ground breaking initiative taken by the IT professionals in the health care system. It is also perfect time to launch such kind of innovative applications where use of 3G phones has increased tremendously and IT awareness is at its peak in the population. The quality and quantity of information available from such application will empower individual and community as a whole to make more informed health care related decisions. With more and more health care data being collected and included in the apps, a significant information regarding different aspects of health care delivery system can provided in addition to inclusion of Medicare data. Although some of the apps may require a little bit of training, but with proper assistance from IT professionals it does not seem to be an unsurmountable hurdle. I was personally impressed by the asthmapolis software which tracks the inhaler use of people and provides the data to physicians, scientist and health agencies which helps them to better understand any underlying personal or environmental characteristics on the pattern of inhaler use at individual and community level. This opens a whole new avenue for the health researchers to identify important health related data and incorporate them into more meaningful information for general population use through such applications.
It appears that information technology is finally ready to be implemented in the health care field. I predict that health information technology will be one of most researched topic in the next 10 years because IT has been proved to increased productivity in other industries. Our health care delivery system calls for technology to increase both production efficiency and allocation efficiency.
ReplyDeleteOut of all apps introduced in this article, I found that patients may be more interested in iTriage and pillbox apps. iTriage can give patients some information about their symptoms and treatments before they visit hospitals or clinics. pillbox can help patients identify an unknown pill.
One of the biggest concern for health care apps is the privacy issues. I think it was the main reason to impede the development of new apps. One potential solution is the collaboration between health care apps developers and online security companies. For example, paypal has an industry-leading technology to secure online monetary transaction. The technology can also be used to transfer health care information. Thus, apps with paypal technology will be able to prevent the leakage of communication between patients and physicians.
One thing I noticed is the lack of apps designed for the elderly population, especially for the oldest old. They have been assumed to be reluctant to accept technological applications.My belief is that the elderly population have not embraced the IT applications because those applications in the current market were not user friendly to them. In the future, it is health service researchers' responsibility to identify the most useful apps for this population and promote them.
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ReplyDeleteThis is a ground breaking initiative taken by the IT professionals in the health care system. It is also perfect time to launch such kind of innovative applications where use of 3G phones has increased tremendously and IT awareness is at its peak in the population. The quality and quantity of information available from such application will empower individual and community as a whole to make more informed health care related decisions. With more and more health care data being collected and included in the apps, a significant information regarding different aspects of health care delivery system can provided in addition to inclusion of Medicare data. Although some of the apps may require a little bit of training, but with proper assistance from IT professionals it does not seem to be an unsurmountable hurdle. I was personally impressed by the asthmapolis software which tracks the inhaler use of people and provides the data to physicians, scientist and health agencies which helps them to better understand any underlying personal or environmental characteristics on the pattern of inhaler use at individual and community level.
ReplyDeleteThis opens a whole new avenue for the health researchers to identify important health related data and incorporate them into more meaningful information for general population use through such applications.