The Significance of Technology in Ensuring Patient Safety

February 3, 2023

Technology has become a crucial part of the medical industry. The right technology can increase efficiency, enhance quality, and reduce budget. Some of the many perks of technology include facilitating communication between clinical workers, improving patient safety, reducing potential medical errors, increasing access to medical information, and encouraging patient-centric care.

Technology has dramatically changed the way healthcare is delivered and has played a significant role in enhancing patient safety. From electronic health records (EHRs) to telemedicine, technology has significantly impacted the healthcare industry and improved patient outcomes.

Technology Helps In Serving Patients Better

The effect of information technology has expanded beyond information visibility and sharing to utilizing Information for data-informed patient care. Advanced data analytics are soaring in increasing the patient care experience.

With a plethora of technology available, healthcare leaders and health IT professionals must take a formal approach to implementing the technology that works best in their specific solution. Clinical workers, technology personnel, and IT professionals can coordinate to achieve the best health management software that suits their and patients’ needs.

How is Technology Improving the Patient Care Experience or Patient Safety?

Facilitates and enhances communication between clinicians:

Numerous healthcare officials are often involved in a patient’s medical journey. This can drastically increase the potential for miscommunication or human or medical error. Communication errors are the most common factors that influence adverse events.

EHRs are curated to help reduce those errors by compiling and maintaining patients’ health-related data into one easily accessible anecdote.

Administrators, clinical workers, and IT professionals must collaborate to analyze areas where technology will benefit their specific operations and set goals for using that technology.

Reduces Medical Errors:

Prescribing errors are another standard medical error that can have severe complications and side effects. Electronic prescribing methods can reduce prescription errors by allowing clinicians to send prescriptions electronically to the pharmacy and build efficient hospital management software.

Medical alerts, clinical flags, and reminders are also some of how technology can reduce medication errors and improve the patient care experience.

Mistakes in prescribing drugs are medical errors with potentially hazardous after-effects. Electronic prescribing helps mitigate risks in this domain. These healthcare management systems reduce the potential for medication errors by eliminating handwritten scripts.

Incorporates Digital Medical Records:

Chronicling patient records electronically can drastically enhance efficiency. Health workers must understand how to input patient information into hospital management software.

Information such as the patient’s medical records, clinical history, and medication records can be stored in the hospital software. The billing department can also use this technology to record and submit insurance claims. Digital medical records result in better, more efficient patient care.

Gives easy access to Information:

IT professionals strive to share patient information across different systems. This is known as Interoperability in healthcare. As digital healthcare management systems improve in this domain, clinical workers can share patient information, reducing the risk of patient treatment errors.

A doctor at a hospital can access a patient’s records with their physician. This can prove beneficial for patients with chronic illnesses. If they want to change doctors or get valuable second opinions from other specialists, their medical histories can be transferred to the preferred doctors.

This way, the chances of getting lost in translation will be reduced substantially, and the doctor can easily understand the patient’s medical history without making any mistakes.

Laymen are not capable of conveying medical diagnoses in precise scientific terms, which can lead to error and confusion. Interoperability can significantly reduce such risks.

Improves Public Health:

Boosting public health revolves around creating preventive programs that help people stay healthy for a longer time. Identifying chronic health issues within specific population demographics is also one of the primary objectives of enhancing public health.

Public health informatics uses data from numerous sources, including hospitals, surveys, social drives, and so on, to help healthcare management teams and government agencies address and prepare for new health threats.

Supports Clinical Decision:

This is one of the most crucial areas where technology can improve the patient care experience. Clinical decision support involves using technology to fetch all the relevant Information about a patient and codified standards about potential treatments into a clinical worker’s hands in real-time.

This is a great way to diagnose complication afflictions. Sometimes, an ailment is difficult to diagnose, and the trial-and-error method is used to see how the patient responds to various treatments.

This can threaten the patient’s health. Clinical decision support is an extremely efficient way to eliminate such practices.

Clinical data analysis can quickly diagnose and help the patient get the proper medical support. This will eliminate the possibility of the wrong treatment being detrimental to the patient’s health.

Enhances Patient-Centric Care:

Encouraging patients to be more involved in their care is paramount for several reasons. This increases compliance and patient satisfaction.

Technology immensely helps contribute to patient-centric care by fostering communication between health service providers and patients through online portals, messaging services, and emails.

It also enhances access to Information such as medical records, which can improve self-monitoring and patient convenience. IT can have a drastic impact on patient safety.

As with most technology, there may be benefits and potential concerns. Patient safety and quality must always remain the primary focus of any incorporation or use of healthcare technology.

Conclusion

Technology has taken the medical domain by storm for all the right reasons. It is elevating healthcare management and the patient care experience. We encourage all health workers to adapt technology and provide a seamless patient experience.