Problems with electronic records?

In this new century of ever advancing technology the medical realm has been making drastic changes on what seems to be a day to day basis but is everything that technology has to offer a good thing? Electronic medical records in the past decade have been sky rocketing in recent years and while what seems to be an almost only positive solution to overflowing file cabinets there may be more drawbacks then meet the eye.

Before even installing an electronic records system hospitals have to realize that start up costs can be quite high, much more expensive than traditional file cabinets. In fact, since January of 2011 there has been 7 billion dollars paid out through the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Records Incentive Program (spectrum.ieee.org). There must be equipment bought and once it’s been bought and installed medical charts need to be converted to electronic form. Even then doctors don’t always know if each patient’s records have been converted (wisegeek.org). On top of that doctors have to learn how to use the electronic system. Learning how to become familiarized with the system may take some time even if they take training before hand which would cost money as well as needing to pay the trainers to train the practitioners. This unfamiliarity with technology can create shortened doctor visits with the doctor struggling to use the new equipment as well. During a visit to the doctor it can also be easy for the doctor to type incorrect information or miss out important details especially if they are unfamiliar with the system (wisegeek.org).

Technology isn’t always reliable as well and a frozen computer can take away time from patient care. Being dependent on power can also lead to serious problems during natural disasters.

It’s easy to think that with advancing technology there are an endless amount of benefits but it’s clear that there are a number of cons hidden in the shadows.   

The Green Way

By Jack Williams

Information Technology greatly impacts both Health and the Environment. It helps health experts keep track of records using MIS systems. It helps doctors and laboratories come up with new, and more helpful drugs to fight sickness and disease. It helps you save paper and in turn save trees that produce oxygen for us to breathe. The list of ways IT effects the environment and Health care individually is endless. I believe that one way IT effects them both in one situation is when it comes to Recycling.

"Recycling is the process of waste for reuse: the processing of used or waste material so that it can be used again, instead of being wasted". Recycling is done in many different ways depending on what is being recycled. For example, Kimberly Clark, a paper manufacturer, takes waste paper in huge bulk, places it in huge waste paper machines,and converts all the waste into pulp. Pulp is crushed paper and wood that is used to make paper products such as toilet paper, hand wipes, paper towels, and tissue paper. This process helps save our environment by making our world and air cleaner due to recycling.

"Global warming is an increase in the world's temperatures, believed to be caused in part by the greenhouse effect". Global warming is a huge part of our lives as it has the potential to effect us all. If global warming gets worse and worse to the point of it drastically effecting the human race, it could be devastating to the worlds population. Now we are hopefully a long way from this becoming a possibility but due to recycling and IT, we are able to stop global warming in its tracks. Technology helps and makes recycling possible by creating machinery to recycle waste, by creating new, tech savvy, products that our better for the environment like hybrid cars, and can be used to genetically modify plants and trees to allow them to grow faster and in turn, create oxygen from carbon dioxide more efficiently. This is how Technology helps our health and environment directly.

Knowledge and its Impacts on Your Decisions

Posted by Krzysztof Kwasniewicz

          You can never know to much about having a healthy lifestyle. Knowledge is important in all aspects of life, but especially so when it comes to being healthy. With the help of the internet, it has never been easier to learn healthy lifestyle choices and ways to prevent disease and sickness. This is one major way the internet has helped our modern society to be healthier not only in the short term, but throughout our lives. Websites live Web MD and even Wikipedia have taught people things to help make the right decisions to live long healthy lives. I challenge you to take a test online by clicking on the link posted at the bottom of this blog. It is a quick 2 minute quiz covering food, diet, and lifestyle choices that can remind you as well as teach you new things and new ways to become a healthier person.

<http://www.allthetests.com/quiz28/quiz/1286912009/Healthy-Diet-Exercise>

       
          Once completing this test, and hopefully having learned new things, comment on this blog evaluating how you did. What score did you receive? Did you feel like the questions were difficult or not? Did you find any answers surprising? Did you learn something new?

          Good luck and have fun!

Re-Commerce: reining in E-waste

Posted by: Tyler Avery

E-Waste. Before researching the environmental impacts of IT, I had no idea that this was such a large problem. E-waste is a loose term, since electronics come in all types, shapes and sizes. Defined as being any type of consumer or business electronic that has reached its useful lifetime expectancy, E-waste is becoming an increasing challenge in the human health environmental field. 

At first, I took this as a small problem, but consider this: every electronic item that you have previously owned times all the people who own electronics times the past 20 or so years. Each time a new phone, computer, television, microwave, stereo, copier, fax machine, typewriter, etc was rendered out of date and consumers bought new ones, where do the old ones go? All the old large screen monitors, old cathode ray televisions, all the refrigerators and home appliances, technically anything after its useful life, obviously made its way to the landfill. But landfills can only be so large, can only hold so much tonnage.   

It has been reported that every year, the world tosses 20-50 million metric tons of electronics; only recycling about 12-18%. I discovered an informative infographic depicting e-waste here. When we toss aside our old equipment, sometimes it doesn’t stay locally. It can be exported to countries like Nigeria, Pakistan, India and China. The infographic describes more, putting into pictures, that people in these countries actually dismantle the used goods and then they are either incinerated, put in a landfill there, or dumped as waste water. That’s kind of upsetting. And honestly speaking, not everyone is trying to minimize their carbon footprint.That is why companies like Gazelle are becoming popular. They are heading up the recycling of used electronics in an effort they call Re-Commerce. I take it you have seen the ads on TV. 

In order to curtail this problem, consumers are asked to follow the old 3 R's mantra Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. You can even donate your old phones or similar items to charity. A web page here advises 5 good charities to participate in, if you feel so inclined. 

What sort of E-waste have you contributed to? What are better ways to solve it? Comment below.

http://www.epa.gov/international/toxics/ewaste/index.html

http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/electronics/whatisewaste/

http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/crazy-e-waste-statistics-explored-in-infographic.html

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/donate-cell-phone-charity.htm#page=0

Domo Arigato Dr. Roboto: Expert Systems in Medicine

Posted by Daniel Powell

Since the dawn of the computer age in the 1950s, scientists and developers have seen the potential for not only computer-aided calculations, but for aided decision making as well.  Artificial intelligence (AI), with its link between computer science and psychology, was born at Dartmouth University (then Dartmouth College) in 1956.  By the late 1970s, the notion of "expert systems," which would accumulate knowledge and use it to  make intelligent decisions, had become a common and accepted idea.

As research and development of such systems moved from university campuses to firms in the fast-growing technology industry, the applications of expert systems changed as well.  Firms focused on developing systems for internal use rather than for use in society.  The result has been expert systems assisting a wide array of industries such as oil and gas, financial management, and manufacturing.  Expert systems have not been so easily applied or accepted in the field of medicine, however.

Many logistical factors have contributed to the slower adoption of expert systems in medicine, however there are also psychological, social, and ethical factors at work as well.  Psychologically, is a patient more likely to trust the decision making of a flesh-and-blood physician or that of an expert system programmed to search its "knowledge bank" for causal and associational relationships to describe what a patient is facing?  Socially, there are dilemma's because a doctor's care for a patient goes far beyond simply diagnosing them.  The emotional effects on recovery as a result of a doctor's care throughout the diagnosis and treatment process are well documented.  If expert systems were to replace a doctor's care in the diagnosis of diseases, could it have lasting effects on the relationship and recovery process?  Ethically, as technology continues to develop, how much is too much when it comes to artificial intelligence in healthcare?  Could human doctor's eventually become completely dispensable?

These are all questions that bear answering, preferably sooner than later.

Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence. 3rd. New York, New York: Bantam Dell, 2005. 164-185. Print.

Shortliffe, Edward. "Medical Expert Systems - Knowledge Tools for Physicians." Western Journal of Medicine. 145.6 (1986): 830-839. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1307157/>.

Healthcare from a Distance

Posted by Brad Haymore

You wake up in the morning and feel like you’ve been hit by a truck. Your body aches, your head is stuffy, and your nose is somehow clogged and runny at the same time.  What do you do?

Most would call their doctor and schedule an appointment.  A short drive and a short wait in the waiting room and “the doctor will see you now.”  After an examination, the doctor prescribes just the right medicine to get you back on your feet!

It sounds simple enough, right?  Now imagine for a moment that you wake up very ill, and realize that if you want to see a doctor, you will have to walk for 3 hours….wait for another 3 hours…and then hope that the doctor or nurse can help you. 

Although this is just a hypothetical situation for us, for some people in third world countries it is a reality. The solution to this problem may be Telemedicine. 

Telemedicine is healthcare and health education that is provided over a distance with the help of information technology (IT).  Possibilities of telemedicine include the ability to monitor a patients’ health from the comfort of their own home, speaking with your doctor face-to-face by video chat, taking a picture of a strange rash on your skin and emailing it to your doctor, or maybe your doctor forwards the picture to another specialist to get a second opinion.  All of these are examples of the applications of telemedicine. 

Telemedicine could be the answer to many healthcare deficiencies in third world countries.  The continent of Africa carries 24% of the diseases of the world and is only cared for by 3% of the world’s health care providers.  Telemedicine would help in providing care to those who live in remote areas, and would allow health care providers to continue their education.  

Although telemedicine sounds like a cure all, there are roadblocks to its success, including the lack of IT infrastructure, cost of implementation, and political policies that have yet to embrace such innovations.

Hopefully the future in healthcare will be brighter with the help of Telemedicine.

Mars, Maurice. "Telemedicine can lower health care costs in Africa." (2012): n. page. Web. 10 Mar. 2013. <http://web.up.ac.za/sitefiles/file/44/1026/2163/8121/Innovate 7/Telemedicine can lower health care costs in Africa.pdf>.