Uses of internet and technology

Uses of Internet and Mobile Technology in Health Systems:
Organizational and Social Issues in a Comparative Context

The Internet provides an opportunity to the public and healthcare professionals to access medical and health information, improve the efficiency and effective, timely healthcare. The rise of mobile systems and the widespread adoption of the cell phone mean that mobile applications are an exciting and rapidly expanding domain for such applications. Many new offerings are being developed through digital appliances, computer terminals and mobile devices. Yet important empirical questions remain to be answered at every level about how effective these systems are, how people in various socio-demographic sectors actually use these systems, what their different effects are on those sectors, and whether their expense justifies the efforts involved. Important too are issues of how quickly and in what format they should be created, who should bear the costs of development and dissemination, how to ensure their dependability and sustainability, and what their immediate and longer term social implications might be. In earlier work, we have highlighted structural problems with Internet healthcare applications (Katz & Rice, 2001). More recently, we have observed that (1) there has been substantial resource commitment, resulting in the creation of many useful centralized services (some commercial, some governmental); (2) however, despite their utility, perceived and actual inadequacies of these services have stimulated disparate groups to organize their own compensatory, decentralized and local networks of health information resources. These include Internet listservs, “blogs” (that is, online interactive diaries or “Weblogs”) and local telephone circles. Often these para-institutional sources are designed to respond to patient needs as perceived by patients and care-givers, and response to the way they formulate and articulate their health concerns. But just as questions must be raised about the bias, flexibility and ease-of-use of the centralized systems, questions must also be raised about the bias, accuracy and accountability of the new flexible ones. (4) As new communication technologies are developed, they are also explored for novel e-health uses. Here a recent example is radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags that allow medical paraphernalia, prescription drugs to be traced, monitored and controlled. Indeed, RFID tags are already being used to track and treat patients in hospital settings. These technologies can not only deliver services cost-effectively but will inevitably save lives. They may even prevent the outbreak of epidemics. However, some of these new technologies raise not only serious questions for students of privacy and ethics, but fear of them may lead to avoidance behavior on the part of sick people. This in turn could lead to potentially catastrophic consequences for both the individual and the general population.
By Msele MUSA
BAPRM 42626