Discuss the Impacts on Medicine of ICT

The impact on medicine has mainly two areas: treatment and administration. The changes on administration enables the staff to get access to patients’ notes, treatment records and information, possibly latest research too. The staff can also create care plans, patients’ drugs lists, drug research and drug records, effectively. These can all be done by using computers. For example, Electronic Patient Record Keeper (EPR) enables staff to keep records of a patient on the computer easily. Data and information on the EPR can be stored quickly within a number of staff, or with the entire hospital staff. This helps conveying information without having the worries of misunderstanding or illegible writing. With EPR, font style is pre-set and everyone should be able to understand.

Regards to treatment improvement of ICT, there is a number of devices used affects the way how patients are treated. With the use of sensors, it scans body tissues of human. This is ideal to be used to detect blood clot tumours and fractures in the body. For example, a patient may have got muscles infection. The sensor will be able to check any infection within the body including the brain, muscles and soft tissues. There is another device called blood barcoding which aims to keep the patient safe from being transfused the wrong blood type and causes some sorts of problems like blood allergies. Each patient is given a unique code to identify each person. This is easier for staff to transfer blood for patients. For example, nurses can use the unique code to find out which blood type he is or what has he been given a blood transfer today. By doing this, it is easier and efficient to identify patients without having to use longer time to verify information of the patient before starting the treatment.

There is a down side of ICT development on treatment and administration. Computers and devices can be relatively expensive. These devices are more likely to be used in hospitals, which mean they are always in a large demand by different hospitals. Without them, the staff might not be able to maintain the efficiency. Another disadvantage would be it can take time to figure out how to use the devices, especially for novice users. As mentioned before, these devices are more mainly used for medical treatment; therefore, not everyone will know how to use them. Special training is required before using them in real life case. In the event of power cut, any devices which is supported by electronic power source will be stop working and therefore it may be awkward to any medical treatment is in progress. Take for instance, without a computer monitor, some components or devices may not function well and it will be difficult for doctors to proceed the treatment, especially the big treatment such as internal body operation.

In conclusion, ICT has brought a great development and influences to us in order to advance our life to a further step. With these all facilities mentioned above, they provide wider options for both patients and doctors for their treatments and administration in the future.