The Role of Technology in Healthcare

On the 15th of March 2010 my classmate Lette and I gave a talk on the role of Technology in Healthcare. This topic was relevant to both of our thesis topics and in researching for this topic I became aware of many issues I need to take into consideration when designing my thesis project for the patients of the Milford Care Centre.

Lette gave a good background in the evolution of technology in healthcare and why it is important for our everyday lives especially relating to diagnostic technology such as x-rays, ultra sounds and MRI technology. She also gave a few good senario examles of healthcare systems failures in Ireland such as the Tallagh hospital letter and x-ray scandal and also the question of weather the use of EHR's will increase the risk of theft of medical records in los Angles. The following video: "Kevin Kelly tells technology's Epic Story" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS1xL1qcBa4 gives a good insight into the meaning of Technology.

For my part in the seminar I focused on healthcare technology design, this involves; design criteria and challenges to designing technology for health care, such as incorporating divergent users, the carers, healthcare professionals as well as the patients themselves which leads to the need of participatory design methods.

The participatory design process invites patients to cooperate during the design process with designers, researchers and developers. It is important to incorporate these various stakeholders into the design process as it enables the understanding of different perspectives. I think this design process will be invaluable in designing the Motomed to incorporate a visual therapy system for the patients of Milford Care Centre. An important note here is; Users are not designers and designers are not users. Users are an important source of information as they provide an understanding of the environment but they can not always suggest the best design.

The importance of understanding the current changes in the healthcare area and characteristics of the different healthcare contexts are also essential elements in the design process as a lack of understanding of the healthcare environment could be critical. These guidelines are very relevant to how I should design a suitable visual art therapy system for Milford Care Centre. Without doubt technology plays a very important role in aiding healthcare but it is also true to say that technology only benefits if all users in the different stages of healthcare are able to utilize the technology in an effective way. During the seminar I showed the class the following video emphasize this point. Healthcare needs to be designed to support divergent users in various contexts and in the case for my thesis project, the motomed system will need to support divergent patients needs.




  

There is also a great need to work with healthcare professionals as healthcare is a complex area to comprehend. Rapidly changing demands and requirements (users) puts alot of pressure on the design and evaluation of new technology in health care. In designing a visual art device for the motomed I will need learn alot more about the environment of the patients in Milford as well as learn about their different illnesses and try to design to facilitate each one. However the problem in specifying requirements for design is that requirements are usually tacit and hard to articulate at the begining of the design process (The need for iterations is especially relevant for this design area). The result is having dynamic requirement specifications and this is one of the main differences and difficulties in designing technology for healthcare.

There are many good examples of online collaborative healthcare technology systems which i demonstrated to the class:

• Google & Microsoft (Google Health & Microsoft HealthVault) have launched their own online patient health records; HealthValue6 & GoogleHealth5
• Telemedicine which can be used by a less experienced surgical team to talked through a process by experts.
• Micro-blogging tools such as Twitter indicates that the exchange of short messages can be powerful for people to share opinions and information.
• Sugarstats.com is also an online resource for patients of diabetes to tract, monitor and share their bloog shugar levels to manage their diabetes.

Heath care blogs are also great resources, the Health care blog by Brian Klepper and and David Kibbe gives some very good examples of the benefits of online technology in health care and the important role it plays in todays society. Another example of Health blogs: http://blogs.consumerreports.org/health/2008/06/finding-an-onli.html

A very impressive advancement in healthcare technology is that of iphone apps such as this one that measures blood sugar levels, recommends to patient what they should eat and allows you to share the information with your family and your doctor. As well as this allows for collaboration between patient and doctor and a guide for the self maintenance your diabetes.

Links to my presentation slides and report.