Benefits of Healthcare Technology-Nursing Essay Samples

Benefits of Healthcare Technology

Clinicians and patients have benefited from the healthcare industry’s fast computerization. However, the use of technology in medicine has not been seamless. As more advanced gadgets have been introduced into the clinical setting, physicians’ workflows have been impacted unexpectedly. These fundamental changes leads to new risks to patient safety. Hence, remain a bitter irony considering that technical solutions remain long touted. More so, as the most effective way to prevent medical errors (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ], 2019) (Benefits of Healthcare Technology).

Most healthcare technology, including computerized provider order entry (CPOE) systems and clinical decision support systems (CDSS). Furthermore, intelligent IV infusion pumps, and cardiac monitoring devices. Hence, give doctors audible or visual alerts to help them avoid dangerous situations or take appropriate action when they arise. These precautions remain well-intended and may be beneficial if utilized alone.

Technological support may be essential to improve patient outcomes and optimize healthcare professional practice. An AI-based CDSS or non-knowledge-based CDSS remain a type of clinical decision support system. More so, that can help manage patients by providing healthcare professionals with information and offering medical recommendations. An alert is the most typical method for an AI-CDSS to communicate with practitioners (Benefits of Healthcare Technology).

The value of alert usability is clinically significant and particularly beneficial when making decisions (Chien et al., 2022). The delivery of CDSS takes many forms, including but not restricted to interruptive actions like “pop-up” alerts. Consequently, like information displays or links (like InfoButton), and the deliberate highlighting of pertinent material. The information must be delivered when appropriate to those who can act on it and in a style that encourages proper action (Benefits of Healthcare Technology).

Alert fatigue remain a prominent patient safety concern today, an unexpected effect of the computerization of health care. The Joint Commission suggested strengthening the culture of safety by fostering an understanding of responsibility among consumers and developers, paying particular consideration to safe IT deployment, and enlisting management to offer supervision of health IT strategy, execution, and assessment to try to mitigate these effects, including alert fatigue (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ], 2019) (Benefits of Healthcare Technology).

Some effective techniques to combat alert fatigue include increasing alert specificity by minimizing or eliminating clinically pointless signals and customizing alerts to patient attributes and crucial integrated clusters of physiological signs. For instance, putting the findings of the renal function test within the alert system to limit the patients for whom nephrotoxic medication alerts are activated.

Organizations might also categorize notifications based on their seriousness (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ], 2019). Only high-level (severe) alerts remain interruptive, and human factors design concepts should beought to remain applicable used creating alerts to prevent alert fatigue. Lastly, alerts remain shareable in various formats to draw physicians’ attention to more clinically significant alerts.

References

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ]. (2019, September 7). Alert fatigue. Patient Safety Network. https://psnet.ahrq.gov/primer/alert-fatigue

Chien, S. C., Chen, Y. L., Chien, C. H., Chin, Y. P., Yoon, C. H., Chen, C. Y., Yang, H. C., & Li, Y. J. (2022). Alerts in Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS): A Bibliometric Review and Content Analysis. Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 10(4), 601. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare10040601