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Concept
Health technology
Summary
Health technology is defined by the World Health Organization as the "application of organized knowledge and skills in the form of devices, medicines, vaccines, procedures, and systems developed to solve a health problem and improve quality of lives". This includes pharmaceuticals, devices, procedures, and organizational systems used in the healthcare industry, as well as computer-supported information systems. In the United States, these technologies involve standardized physical objects, as well as traditional and designed social means and methods to treat or care for patients.
During a pre-digital era, patients suffered from inefficient and faulty clinical systems, processes, and conditions. Many medical errors happened in the past due to undeveloped health technologies. Some examples of these medical errors included adverse drug events and alarm fatigue. Alarm fatigue is caused when an alarm is repeatedly triggered or activated and one becomes desensitized to them. As the alarms were sometimes triggered by unimportant events in the past, nurses thought the alarm was not significant. Alarm fatigue is dangerous because it could lead to death and dangerous situations. With technological development, an intelligent program of integration and physiologic sense-making was developed and helped reduce the number of false alarms.
Also, with greater investment in health technologies, fewer medical errors happened. Outdated paper records were replaced in many healthcare organizations by electronic health records (EHR). According to studies, this change has brought a lot of changes to healthcare. Drug administration has improved, healthcare providers can now access medical information easier, provide better treatments and faster results, and save more costs.
To help promote and expand the adoption of health information technology, Congress passed the HITECH act as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. HITECH stands for Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act.
Official source
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