Technology overall has an effect on almost all industries today and life in general. More specifically, technology has positively impacted healthcare when it comes to medical technology and improving patient’s quality of life. For example, “the widespread adoption of electronic health records (EHR) has resulted in significant savings in health care costs as well as improved patient health and safety” (Banova, 2013, p.1). Many healthcare facilities are transitioning from keeping written records to having patient files kept in databases that can be accessed anywhere in the facility. This is advantageous because this saves a great amount of time and ensues data is kept in an organized way to be easily managed. Furthermore, this has helped with more accurate diagnostic tests especially with nuclear medicine. With the availability of these tests and better medical instruments due to technology technicians, surgeons and physicians do not need to send patients for invasive procedures as frequent to form a diagnostic. Overall, this increase in healthcare technology has saved lives, time and also led to a job demand for MRI technologists and radiologist.
Unfortunately, there are challenges to technology in the healthcare environment for example, the availability of medical information online gives patient clouded judgement and may negatively affect doctor appointments. Also, many believes particular websites can lead to self-diagnostic which can ultimately be life threatening. In addition, these advances in medical technology can have increased cost when it comes to transitioning to EHR’s and keeping systems updated. For example, the systems are always being altered to adhere to needs of both the patients and providers, these alterations have high costs. Lastly, there is a privacy issue since EHR’s contain medical history, test results and medication you on and this information can be misused, thus resulting in a loss of personal data.