Technology Trends in the Healthcare Industry The fast rise of technology and the everyday upgrading has left many fields and works of life on a constant change. With technology tre

Nkengazong Tung

University of Maryland Global Campus

UCSP 615: Orientation to Graduate Studies

Dr. Pamela Czapla

28 June 2022

Technology Trends in the Healthcare Industry

The fast rise of technology and the everyday upgrading has left many fields and works of life on a constant change. With technology trends having a very great impact on our daily lives, healthcare has and is still facing a fair share of the technology trend changes and ameliorations. “Healthcare changes dramatically because of technological developments, from anesthetics and antibiotics to magnetic resonance, imaging scanners and radiotherapy” (Harold, 2013). According to Harold Thimbleby in the journal of public health, he stated that, “Technology drives healthcare more than any other force, and in the future, it will continue to develop in dramatic ways”.

Cybersecurity is one of the fastest-changing sectors in the world today. As systems become tightly secured, hackers get smarter every day as they find loopholes and vulnerabilities in systems. Hackers try to outsmart security providers and vice versa, making this a competition to find out who is smarter. Security companies struggle every day to maintain the integrity of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) as well as secure the network from infiltration and unauthorized access. An article by Ondřej & David, emphasizes on an Emotet-Trickbot-Ryuk ransomware virus attack on the Benešov hospital (Czech Republic). They make notice that, even a middle-size hospital with a decent and well managed cybersecurity system, might be prone to attacks. It is for this reason that cybersecurity changes constantly and gets better everyday because hospitals need to protect their patients’ information and privacy.

Before the integration of technology into the healthcare system, many surgical procedures that required flawless precision could not be done by just the simple surgeon. Monitoring patients’ vital signs, documenting care plans, as well as securing patients’ information was a challenge. With the integration of technology in healthcare these can now all be accomplished. Cloud services help to store, handle and process massive amounts of data making it convenient for medical providers to securely access patients’ information at any time. Currently, most healthcare organizations use cloud-based applications and related services to deliver better healthcare to their clients.

Furthermore, the cybersecurity world constantly evolves, it comes along with an increase in cybersecurity threats and trends. Healthcare systems today strive to obtain the best cost-effective security to protect their clients' information and it becomes extremely costly when there is a data breach and PII gets into the wrong hands. “A major cyberattack that disrupted care cost Scripps Health nearly $113 million in lost revenue and additional costs, the San Diego-based system reported” (King, 2021). Remote/ tele work, Artificial Intelligence and Increase in cloud services are three trends that contribute to the fusion of technology and healthcare, and they are significantly aide in the growth and advancement of the healthcare industry today and in the future.

Remote/ Tele work

With the recent COVID 19 pandemic, companies and employers tried to figure out a way to keep businesses rolling amidst all the restrictions. As a result of social distancing and quarantining, the idea of remote/ telework provided a solution to the problem. People were allowed to work from the comfort of their homes thereby reducing the spread of COVID 19, reducing cost and increasing efficiency. Nurses and doctors can now carry out patient consultations, evaluations, medication orders and communication just by using portable devices which makes their jobs easier. Patients do not have to wait for long periods of time to see a doctor because video consultations are becoming predominantly used. “The application of wireless devices has led to a significant improvement in the quality delivery of care in telemedicine systems.” (Rezaeibagha & Mu, 2018, pp. 1). Unlike Traditional medicine where patients had to physically visit a hospital or clinic for a consultation with their doctors, telemedicine makes it possible for people in rural areas or older people to do their consultations on the phone or via video call without having to go through the stress of traveling. Telemedicine is efficient, convenient and beneficial to both the client and the doctor. By eliminating the requirement of an office, healthcare facilities get to keep down their cost of renting an office space for the doctors. They also save time in the sense that, more visits are completed in less time when the travel time of both the patient and doctor, to and from the office are factored out.

Notwithstanding my opinion that Telework provides huge benefits for employers and employees, it is imperative to understand that it has both advantages and disadvantages, and it is not suitable for everyone. “Workplace flexibility is a key factor in the process of reconciling professional and private life, especially for those who take care of children or for adults with special needs” (Lupu, 2017). Lupu goes further in their article elaborating on the advantages of teleworking and explains that, when a working program is flexible, it gives the employee a chance to properly plan their daily activities, thereby leading to efficient productivity. Some benefits of teleworking include reducing the loss of potential work time as a result of transportation, providing employment opportunities for people who live in areas with limited transportation, also reducing stress caused by traffic, conflicts amongst colleagues and superiors, thereby improving mental health, work focus and output.

Finally, Lupu explains that some of the disadvantages of telework for employees involve the difficulty to solve technical problems, professional isolation which reduces physical interactions with colleagues and the inequality of salaries between employees who work remotely and those working in the office. As far as the employer, the main concern about teleworking is that they have limited access to their employees, limited control of their employees as well as problems they face to properly secure data, their networks and information flow.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The use of AI in healthcare has the potential to help healthcare providers in many aspects of patient care and administrative processes. “Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing medical care. Patients with problems ranging from Alzheimer's disease to heart attacks to sepsis to diabetic eye problems are potentially benefiting from the inclusion of AI in their medical care” (Griffin, 2021). Let’s investigate a type of artificial intelligence used in the healthcare industry and how the industry benefits from its use.

Machine learning: This is one of the most common forms of artificial intelligence in healthcare. “It is a broad technique at the core of many approaches to AI and there are many versions of it” (Davenport, 2019). It basically involves the use of technology to understand precision medicine. Being able to predict what treatment procedures are likely to be successful with different patients, based on their physiology and their treatment framework is a huge leap forward for many healthcare organizations. “Machine learning has gained popularity in healthcare due to its capacity to aid in the early detection of diseases in a reasonably speedy and accurate manner” (Shaheen, 2021). A book titled “Machine Learning for Healthcare Technologies” by David A. Clinton, provides a snapshot of the state of current research at the interface between machine learning and healthcare with special emphasis on machine learning projects that are achieving improvement in patient outcomes. David in his book explains how challenging the healthcare industry is but also how rewarding it can be. The amount of data in healthcare that needs to be processed is unmeasurable, hence the reason machine learning is essential in aiding in the decision-making process.

Also, administrative applications are widely used in artificial intelligence systems across the healthcare industry. This works to ease the collection of data for patients and groups them in sub files based on their diagnosis. It also makes it easy for synchronizing patient information with other authorised medical organisations and practitioners.

Increase in cloud services and cloud security

In a research study by Park & Lim, 2015, “a multilayer secure biomedical data management system for managing a very large number of diverse personal health devices is proposed”.

The system is integrated in the sense that both a Personal Healthcare Device (PHD) communication system and a remote PHD management system work together as a single system. Finally, the system proposed in this paper provides user/message authentication processes to securely transmit biomedical data measured by PHDs based on the concept of a biomedical signature.

In addition, blockchain is an emerging technology used in healthcare. It is a cloud-managed platform that aides in the preservation and exchange of patients’ data between hospitals, physicians, laboratories and pharmacies. “According to the literature, blockchain technology is mostly utilized for data management operations in healthcare and Internet of Things (IoT), specifically to improve data security, which includes data integrity, access control, and privacy preservation” (Endale, 2022).

As a result, medical providers have a one stop shop to go for all patients’ needs, thereby, facilitating their jobs. Imagine an app that connects all medical and service providers for patients; a patient requests a nursing visit on the app, the nurse visits the patient and then uses the same app to write a prescription order and sends to the doctor for verification and approval, the doctor approves the order on the same app. Once approved, the pharmacy receives the order, processes it and then delivers it to the patient. This is a short scenario of how cloud services benefit the healthcare industry. This has reduced the wait time for patients and increased reaction time for healthcare providers. It also helps to properly store patient procedures and provide a chain of documentation and proof that the care plan is being executed as it should.

An Important Emerging Issue

The Rise of Ransomware

This is the most challenging part of technology in the health industry because a successful ransomware attack can cripple any organization. A ransomware is a type of malware or a type of attack that locks the information owner out of their files and computers. Attackers encrypt the files, have remote control of all the files and then demand a ransom to be paid before they can decrypt the files and relinquish control to the original information owner. It is important for the healthcare industry to understand the risks involved with ransomware and try to prevent it or have a framework or procedures in place to mitigate the attacks. An article published by PR Newswire in Jan 2022, informs us about the DataHEALTH Inc. ransomware attack that occurred in 2021, how they responded to the attack. “DataHEALTH, Inc. ("DataHEALTH"), a cloud hosting, cloud backup, data storage and recovery service provider for the health care industry that provides services to health care providers throughout the country, today announced that it experienced a criminal ransomware attack on some of its servers that contain health care providers' information.” (PRNewswire, 2022)

Conclusion

Though the trends have been met with stiff resistance by both the users and those fighting every day to find the loopholes in technology to attack or hack the systems, it would be worth mentioning that the trends in technology have made the health industry faster, more reliable, efficient, and more productive. It has also eliminated evitable complexities. It is with no doubt that technology works hand in hand for the betterment of the health care system and could help transform unsustainable healthcare systems into sustainable ones. It equalizes the relationship between medical professionals and patients and provides faster, cheaper and more effective solutions for disease control and management.

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