Digital Healthcare: Examining Technologies and Applications Report

This report provides an overview of digital healthcare technologies, focusing on mobile health applications, electronic health records (EHR), and telemedicine. Mobile health apps offer real-time health monitoring and improve patient engagement, while EHRs facilitate better healthcare through efficient data sharing and clinical decision-making. Telemedicine enhances accessibility and convenience for patients, especially during pandemics. The report discusses the benefits, challenges, and target audiences for each technology, highlighting their impact on healthcare delivery and patient outcomes. It concludes that technology plays a crucial role in healthcare, enabling effective diagnoses and improved communication between doctors and patients. The report also acknowledges the challenges associated with these technologies, such as security concerns, implementation complexities, and cost.

Week 11 Module 6
Digital Healthcare

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY.......................................................................................................................................3
Mobile Health Applications ............................................................................................................3
Electronic health Records ...............................................................................................................4
Telemedicine ...................................................................................................................................5
Technology used by patients, consumers and health professions ...................................................5
Age group and target audience........................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................................7
.............................................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
There are various benefits of technology in medical and healthcare of patients. As it helps in
making people aware about chronic disease and on time it can take consultation from doctor. It
provides with diagnosis report of patients and by they they can identify disease and get medicine to
cure disease. Digital technology helps in recording of patients data in order to make it more easier
for doctor to give right treatment. There area various tools of medical and healthcare technology
which provides safety to patients. It helps in providing medication and flags reminders for consult
and diagnosis reports. Healthcare alerts helps patients to get specific treatment. Electronic data
leads to uniformity of practice across health practitioners. This presentation will cover three digital
technology of healthcare along with challenges and benefits. In addition to that it will cover how
digital technology helps patients in improving health and cure chronic disease. At last, it will cover
for what age group this technology is made for.
MAIN BODY
The role of technology in healthcare is unforgettable and it provides tons of benefits when it
come to healthcare. It has reshaped at how individual looks at patient care, making more effective
hospital management and discovering better drugs by conducting research. It makes research
process much easier as data can be collected from online source and based on interpretation,
facilitates benefit of new discovery. Its importance in healthcare is deeply rooted and and provides
quick care management in case of any casualties and emergency. Following are some technology
that are widely used in healthcare industry.
Mobile Health Applications
This technology is widely used in healthcare industry as it provides with real time status of
individual health. They are built in smartphone applications with sensors that helps in monitoring
real time health related behaviour. There are various healthcare application which can be used to
detect health related issue by monitoring and analysing heartbeat, blood pressure rate and oxygen
level too. There are various wearable devices which can be connected to smartphones and can be
synchronised in order to get real time data. This technology is commonly used across the world and
is quiet affordable too. Mobile health apps helps in self monitoring psychological markers in order
to encourage for physical activities and healthy diets.
Benefits of health care mobile applications
 Improves Patient engagement – In today's patient centric environment, quality control is
becoming more popular than ever. Mobile health care applications helps in engagement by

various patient focused care along with that it also provides with personalised experience.
 Minimise risk of Misdiagnosis – It becomes difficult to manage patient records manually
and may lead to inaccuracies and consumes more time. These application helps in
maintaining patients data. It provides with patient data and he can be diagnosed in a better
way. Traditional style of diagnosis may lead to misdiagnosis.
 Immediate access to anytime – This technology is far better than traditional access to
doctors for emergency, but healthcare mobile application helps person to get quick diagnose
in order to get treatment. It is accessible anytime, anywhere from the comfort of individual.
Challenges
 Security – It is important to keep patients records safe and it may be lost due to any server or
technical issue. This creates complexity in retrieving customer data due to cyber attack.
There are many hacker that may steal patients data and can be used for their interest. Loss of
digital data may lead to misdiagnosis. So it is important to keep backup of data so that it can
be retrieved in case of lost data.
 Complexity in implementation and integration – It becomes difficult to implement this
technology as many people do not have access to smartphones or not having knowledge.
 Difficulty for users – Patients become frustrated by this technology as some are not aware
and makes difficult to use. It is not user friendly and becomes difficult to use and manage
such applications.
Electronic health Records
This technology helps in sharing information with doctors and patients. It facilitates in
minimum diagnosis error and becomes easier for doctor to give right treatment. By having all
records of patients, it allows to get safer treatment. It helps in providing more efficiency to
customers. And to doctors too. By having digital technology, it reduces burden of prescription slips
and in case of loss, it is easy to retrieve from internet.
Benefits of electronic Health Records
 Facilitates better health care – It helps in providing care to patient and in terms of
effectiveness, communication, efficiency and equity. By having proper health care records it
heps in getting right treatment in right time in order to cure disease.
 Improved efficiency and lower heath care cost – It helps patients in getting right treatment
within time by diagnosing from previous data. It is cot effective and have lots of benefits as
it will help in making treatment more efficient.

 Better clinical decision making - It helps in taking better health related decision based on
information collected through various sources. It facilitates in making cure patients by
taking effective clinical decision.
Challenges
 Technical ability- It becomes difficult in rural areas in which technology is not much
emerged and connecting to system becomes complex. It becomes a challenge as this
technology do not reach rural areas.
 Cost of use – it is costly as compare to traditional method and cane be expensive in both
implementation and usage. This technology is costly and everyone cannot afford.
 Training – In some areas, people are not aware to this technology and it becomes difficult to
train in order to make them comfortable.
Telemedicine
This technology helps in communicating with doctors and patients in a virtual way. It is cost
effective means to consult in doctor. This technology is widely emerged during pandemic and
people of Australia used this technology to consult doctor. It can be used by either video
conferencing or by text or email.
Benefits
 Comfort and convenience -This technology makes it easy for patients to consult with doctor
over video calls. On video calls, patients can save their expenses of transportation. It
becomes easy for individual to consult doctor from their own comfort. Patients can fit into
their busy schedule. Individual have not to take leave from office.
 Control of infectious Illness – During COVID-19, it helps in preventing flu and infectious
disease and doctors are using telehealth appointments in order to prevent themselves from
flu. This technology helped in limiting spread of flu. It also saves sick people in contact with
normal people.
 Better Assessment – This helps in making better decision by making correct assessment of
patient's disease.
Technology used by patients, consumers and health professions
Healthcare technology is used by most of the people in order to track day to day health
related behaviour. It can be used in various ways in order to make people fit and fine. Health care
mobile applications are used by patients in order to track activities. Electronic health records are

used by both patients and health professionals so that they can make better decision by analysing
previous data. It is useful in providing correct treatment to patients so that they can be cured from
chronic and fatal disease. Telemedicine provides two way communication between patients and
doctors in order to make it more convenient. By opting this technology, patients can consult to
doctors in a virtual way and makes more convenient for people who are not comfortable to go into
doctor's chamber.
Age group and target audience
The identified technologies which have been discussed in detail in this report appeal to a
diverse set of patients and people who belong to different age groups. Across the entire lifespan of a
human, they go through various stages which begins as a toddler and goes up all the way to being a
senior citizen and the needs of people during these different stages differ in terms of the healthcare
related attention they need. Mobile health applications, electronic health records and telemedicine
are all very successful digital technologies and their comparison across the human lifespan has been
listed below to determine which stage are these technologies best made for.
 Mobile health applications – This digital technology is primarily beneficial and is made for
adolescents which belong to the age group of 12 to 18 years and young adulthood which
fills the age between 18 to 40 years of age. These stages of the human lifespan are linked to
erratic behaviours and the need to appear tech savvy and cool while searching for ways to
make convenient which is all done by mobile health applications. These applications help
adolescents to find quick health related information in a tech savvy manner and allows
young adults to book appointments and get consultations with ease.
 Electronic health records – This technology is beneficial for people belonging to all major
lifespans as it allows people to store and retrieve complex and large amounts of data with
major convenience. However, people belonging to late adulthood which consists of people
who are over the age of sixty five since these people cannot store large amounts of medical
files and relevant data and their medical histories are often extensive where digital record
are very effective. Electronic health records help senior citizens to have constant digital
access to their medical files which allows them to switch treatments and doctors on the fly
which is a great utility to have as their convenience is of utmost importance in healthcare
 Telemedicine – This technology is also very beneficial establishing medical care without the
need of being physically present which is a boon in the post pandemic environment where
physical contact has been restricted. This technology is very helpful especially in case of

infancy which is the lifespan consisting of newborn children till they turn eighteen months
old and by offering mediums of technology which facilitate virtual consultations and
treatments are very helpful for parents as newborns offer suffer from travel hazards which
makes such technologies useful in timely treatment from the comfort of their homes. Infants
are also subjects of an underdeveloped immune system and clinics and hospitals are often
filled with bacteria that can make them ill upon exposure and this is also where telemedicine
technologies help by providing an avenue where infants can be safely examined by doctors
and given the required medicines along with their instructions without exposing them to
hazardous environments. Telemedicine has successfully changed the way infants are
administered care and has value in the post pandemic world as toddlers can catch the
coronavirus quite quickly (Bahl, and et.al., 2020).
CONCLUSION
From the above presentation, it was concluded that technology plays a crucial role in
healthcare industry. By this patients can be diagnosed in an effective manner by collecting
information from digital records. Telemedicine helps in effective communication between doctor
and patients in order to make patient fit. Mobile application helps patients to track each and activity
related to health behaviour. By using technology patients can be diagnosed with correct treatment.
Along with benefits, it have many challenges which could not be avoided and must be taken into
consideration while opting this technology. During pandemic, telemedicine have evolved as it helps
in preventing from infectious disease.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bahl, S., and et.al., 2020. Telemedicine technologies for confronting COVID-19 pandemic: a
review. Journal of Industrial Integration and Management, 5(04), pp.547-561.
Dorsey, E.R. and Topol, E.J., 2020. Telemedicine 2020 and the next decade. The Lancet,
395(10227), p.859.
Gauthier, C., Bastianutti, J. and Haggège, M., 2018. Managerial capabilities to address digital
business models: The case of digital health. Strategic Change, 27(2), pp.173-180.
Godfrey, A. and Stuart, S. eds., 2021. Digital Health: Exploring Use and Integration of Wearables.
Academic Press.
Li, R., and et.al., 2020. Electronic health records and polygenic risk scores for predicting disease
risk. Nature Reviews Genetics, 21(8), pp.493-502.
Niakan Kalhori, and et.al., 2021. Digital health solutions to control the COVID-19 pandemic in
countries with high disease prevalence: literature review. Journal of Medical Internet
Research, 23(3).
Qudah, B. and Luetsch, K., 2019. The influence of mobile health applications on patient-healthcare
provider relationships: a systematic, narrative review. Patient education and counseling,
102(6), pp.1080-1089.
Online referencing
Digital health, 2022 [online] available through
<https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/digital-health>