Abstract
Advances in technology, especially wireless technology, creates a better opportunity to improve healthcare institutions through making communications more efficient and increasing the effectiveness of practitioners. Healthcare communication challenges are among the high-ranking issues affecting communities in the world today. Healthcare centers that have implemented wireless communication technology have realized great changes in their operations in terms of speed, safety, and efficient communications between parties. The benefits of wireless communication in the healthcare industry include increased service delivery, reduced cost of healthcare, improved data delivery and efficient access to fundamental EMR. Wireless communications also introduce harm to healthcare that occurs because of network failure or poor signals. The following discussion gives an expanded analysis of the above.
Introduction
Advances in technology, especially wireless technology, creates a better opportunity to improve healthcare institutions through making communications more efficient and increasing the effectiveness of practitioners. Wireless communication refers to the transfer of information between two parties without any electrical conductor connection. Examples of wireless communication gadgets used today are radio receivers; cellular cell phones, and wireless networking (the Internet) (Morinaga, Kohno & Sampei, 2012). According to Jones (2012), healthcare team member’s communication processes and patient’s capacity to follow up medical recommendations have a strong relationship. Effective communication between healthcare providers and patients assists in easier management of one’s health issues, promotes self-management of chronic medical conditions and enables adoption of preventive medical conditions. The below analysis give the impact of availability of wireless communication in the healthcare industry.
Analysis
Healthcare communication challenges are among the high-ranking issues affecting communities in the world today. Emergence of new diseases threats, aging populations, shortage of healthcare professionals and rising healthcare costs also contribute to the overall problem in the healthcare industry. Availability of technologically advanced communications networks has the potential of improving healthcare services in terms of doctor’s response time, accessibility, and increased quality of patient care. Healthcare centers that have implemented wireless communication technology have realized great changes in their operations in terms of speed, safety, and efficient communications between parties.
A research conducted by Spyglass Consulting Group in 2006 came up with three major elements that drive the implementation of wireless communications in the healthcare industry. Firstly, wireless communication technology implementation into the healthcare services improves patient safety. Insurers and healthcare providers incur losses of billions of dollars every year because of medical error costs that result into millions of injuries and deaths. In order to address this issue, the healthcare industry has a determination to make improvements using the current technology in order to promote safety of patients and doctors. Secondly, the rising health costs contribute to the implementation of wireless communications in the healthcare industry. In the United States, 17.9% of G.D.P comes from healthcare related costs, and the value has the potential of rising to 20% (Wayne, 2013). In order to minimize the amount of spending in this industry, wireless communication technology offers a better solution. Finally, shortages of chronic laborers promote the implementation of wireless communication in the healthcare industry. Lack of enough healthcare workers and professionals contribute to the patient safety because the limited number of workers struggle to deliver quality services, which is hard. Implementation of wireless communications can create more awareness to qualified people who are in need of jobs (Malkary, 2006).
Technological advancement has changed tradition processes of delivering healthcare services because most hospitals are now digitalized. How do the following three factors contribute to the improvement of quality of healthcare using the wireless communications? Effective monitoring of patient conditions is the key method of achieving a quality patient care. Implementing wireless communication facilitates communication between doctors and nurses, availability of information through the internet to promote improved decision-making processes and better coordination among healthcare providers (Morinaga, Kohno & Sampei, 2012). However, implementation of wireless communication in the healthcare industry has its own benefits and harms as discussed below.
Benefits
Firstly, the adoption of Information technology, many healthcare centers have moved from the traditional ways of communicating with patients to more advanced methods. Wireless communication enhances patience privacy hence strengthening communication security.cin the past, healthcare providers used papers to enter patient information, a form that can be open to anyone to view. With the introduction of wireless communication, doctors can easily describe patients’ problems without necessarily having to write them down on papers. A good example is the use of cell phones. In addition, traditional model of healthcare provision required a patient to walk into the healthcare center to receive his or her medical information. With wireless communication, things have become easier because patients can receive their information anytime and anywhere without travelling to a hospital (Shen, Kato & Lin, 2010; 15).
Secondly, implementation of wireless communication in healthcare centers helps in improving data delivery, and ensures all medical crises or urgent matters are notified to the relevant authority immediately. The productivity of staff in any organization is vital for its growth and delivery of quality services to clients. Most healthcare centers that use wireless technology in their hospitals have seen the benefit of technology. Staff members can interact with one another from any location within the healthcare center and share information efficiently. The healthcare sector has introduced an application found in Smartphone called a Single Point of Contact that provides an enhanced coordination of communication between doctors, nurses and other staff members.
Wi-Fi is a form of wireless technology that promotes effective data delivery and fast notification of urgent matters in healthcare centers. Wi-Fi connections make all departments and units within healthcare center share information irrespective of the location of the staff member. Moreover, patients whose gadgets are Wi-Fi enabled can also communicate their problems to the doctors before consultation. Doctors in return keep such information safely and confidentially waiting for the patient to show up. Using Wi-Fi communication, hospitals can treat and manage a number of patients with different cases because physicians communicate with one another. In addition, the hospital staff does not spend many hours accessing patient information but treats and discharges patients quickly and in an accurate way (Shen, Kato & Lin, 2010; 13).
Thirdly, wireless communication improves the quality of healthcare services by saving costs. Speeding up the flow of information and increased accuracy brought about by implementing wireless communication technology in healthcare centers saves many costs related to errors, delays, and multiple calculations from manual methods. Most hospitals have their own websites where they place a list of all services offered. On the other hand, patients have internet-enabled gadgets such as cell phones, iPads, and Computers that enable them enter into hospital websites and search for these services. The presence of such mode of communication saves people the cost of travelling to a healthcare center to look services, which the healthcare does not offer. In addition, communication between hospitals and patients through cell phone calls is an effective way of acquiring information about a certain hospital without necessarily having to be at the hospital physically (Shen, Kato & Lin, 2010; 12-13).
Finally, wireless communication promotes efficient access to fundamental electronic medical records (EMR), medical references, and other decision support tools necessary for the provision of quality healthcare services. EMR assists improve the doctor’s ability to diagnose a medical problem and minimize medical errors, hence improving the outcome of a patient. With the current communication, physicians have a reliable source of patient’s health information making it easier for accessing medical references related to certain illnesses. In addition, EMR systems do not only communicate patient health information but also keeps an update of any problem arising from prescriptions provided (Lisa, 2010).
Harms
Wireless communication has also some harm to the quality of healthcare services. All systems are prone to failure. Sometimes network problems occur due to some technical problems on servers stopping all communication processes. Such an incidence leads to high harms in the healthcare, more so where all processes rely on such systems to carryout services to customers. In some cases, network failure leads to collapse of information exchange between various departments leading to delays and complications of patients that eventually result into loss of many lives. Moreover, areas with poor network signals experience such problems causing many inconveniences to the community who only depend of their services. Delays lead into much harm associated with ineffectiveness of services, errors and time loss, increasing the cost of acquiring medical assistance (Shen, Kato & Lin, 2010; 17).
Conclusion
In generally, healthcare is a balance between accuracy, urgency, privacy, technology and regulations. Striking this balance makes solving issues in the healthcare industry a hard task, but the availability of necessary wireless solutions makes it easier. As seen from the discussion, wireless communication has contributed t a high degree in improving healthcare services and saving many lives. The discussed benefits of wireless communication in the healthcare industry are increased service delivery, reduced cost of healthcare, improved data delivery and efficient access to fundamental EMR. On the other hand, harms occur due to network failure causing delays, less effectiveness and introduction of errors that result into increased costs. Secure and reliable wireless communications are essential to healthcare solutions when it comes to handling of patient confidential information data. Wireless communication device manufacturers understand the need for remote healthcare infrastructures and come up with devices capable of servicing a larger population.
References
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