ICT Applications and Benefits in Health and Social Care Settings

This report provides a comprehensive overview of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) applications in health and social care. It explores various ICT tools, including Electronic Medical Records, Radio-Frequency Identification Tags, Telemedicine, and Self-Monitoring systems, detailing their functionalities and benefits for service users, health and social care givers, and organizations. The report highlights the advantages of ICT such as improved chronic disease management, streamlined data storage, and remote patient care. It also addresses the legal considerations of employing ICT, emphasizing the importance of confidentiality, privacy, and data security, as well as the need for proper training and adherence to cultural sensitivities, ensuring responsible and effective implementation of these technologies in healthcare settings. The report concludes by emphasizing that while ICTs reduce costs and enhance the efficiency of healthcare, careful consideration of legal and ethical aspects is essential to protect patient rights and promote equitable care.

Running head: INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT)
Unit 1: Task 3
Information Booklet: Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT)
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Health and Social Care

2
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT)
Information and Communication Technology: Its use and application in
health and social care
There are various types of ICTs in health and
social care and this includes
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) encompass a wide range of digital
technologies which help to uplift the overall process of the care plan in health and social
care. It is helps in prompt sharing of the information among the service users and the service
givers and this explicit exchange of information between the principal stakeholders helps to
promote health and wellness.

3
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT)
1. Electronic Medical Records: It helps to keep a track of all the patient information in a
computerised mode (soft-copy) (Zarcadoolas et al. 2013)
Figure: Electronic Medical Record
2. Radio-Frequency Identification Tags: These are special tags that are used to tag patients
and monitor them remotely through computer. This is extremely helpful to monitor patients
suffering from mental health complications (Ranasinghe et al. 2014)

4
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT)
Picture: Radio-Frequency Identification Tags
3. Telemedicine: They are special help offered by the nurses or doctors or other healthcare
professionals through phone. It is a remote mode of providing medical advice during
residential or during emergency. It also promotes active communication between the patients
and the care givers (Herrington, Zardins and Hamilton 2013)
Figure: Procurement of Telemedicine in residential care
4. Self Monitoring: Extremely useful to indulge patients within the whole process of care
giving via getting them assigned to execute in the process of disease management. One of the
important self monitoring devise under ICT is self-monitoring of the blood glucose level via
digital glucomete (Bosi et al. 2013).
Figure: Self-monitoring of blood glucose level

5
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT)
Benefits of ICTs from the perspectives of different stakeholders
Service Users
1. Proper application of the ICTs helps in the successful management of the chronic
diseases or disease which shows frequent relapse. This self management of disease under the
banner of ICTs is popularly known as “self-monitoring. “Self-monitoring is done via special
software. For example, the monitoring of the blood glucose level is done via glucometer. This
is a digital machine that helps in self-monitoring of the blood glucose level of the diabetic
patients without taking assistance from the healthcare professionals. Access to the glucometer
helps the diabetic patient to keep a detailed eye on their hyperglycaemic levels and thereby
paying a visit to the doctors. Regular monitoring of the blood glucose also helps to increase
patient’s self awareness (Ong, Chua and Ng 2014).
2. ICT also helps in the generation of special electronically driven software that helps
in managing the healthcare needs of the patients. For example there are special apps that are
used to set reminder alerts for upcoming booster doses (vaccinations) or for next doctor’s
visit. This software driven reminder alerts eradicates the chances of missing doctor’s visit and
thereby helping to improving quality of care (Carspecken et al. 2013).
Health and Social care givers
1. One of the revolutions of ICTs in the domain of health and social care is creating
provision for the electronic storage of data and sharing those data across the different
healthcare professionals associated in procurement of the care plan. One of the important
examples of the electronic storage of data is Electronic Medical Record (EMRs) or
Electronic Health Records (EHRs). It helps the health or social care professionals to work in
a stress free manner as it eradicates the hassle of manual data handling. It also helps the

6
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT)
healthcare professionals to quickly access the past history of the patients from any corner of
the world and devise the care plan accordingly (Denny et al. 2013).
2. Application of telemedicine is another benefit for the health and social care givers.
It help the health and the social care professionals to handle more patients remotely and
deliver them quality of care without making them visit to the hospital. The use of
telemedicine also helps to reduce the overall hospital visit and thereby helping to reduce the
workload among the healthcare professionals. The application of telemedicine is found to be
extremely useful in case of managing patients with mental health complications (Lokkerbol et
al. 2014).
Health or Social Care Organisations
1. Radio-Frequency Identification Tags apart from tagging the patients is also used to
tag the expensive medical equipments. This tagging of the medical equipments or the medical
instruments helps the administrative authority of keep a track and proper record of the
important medical instruments and thereby helping to manage the resources of the health or
social care organisations in an ordered manner (Coustasse, Tomblin and Slack 2013).
2. The application of the EMRs helps to save a significant amount of the manual
labour. Moreover, it also eradicates the requirement of the rigorous paper documentation of
the patient’s information and managing the same in an ordered manner. Thus overall the
application o the EMRs or EHRs help in health or the social care organisations to manage the
process of care giving in a cost effective way. Save in the overall cost in the domain of the
data documentation in turn help to reduce the overall cost of care (Denn et al. 2013).

7
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT)
Legal consideration of employing ICT and its impact on health and social
care
1. Confidentiality and privacy is an important legal consideration of employing ICT.
EMR helps the health or the social care workers to access the information of the patient’s
remotely. However, this wide access of the patient’s data may lead to bridging of the privacy
and the confidentiality of the patient’s rights. According to the Data Protection Act of 1998,
this bridging of the privacy and confidentiality of the patient’s data may lead to extreme legal
complications leading to the overall ban over the use of the EMRs. Due to this reason, the
health or the social care organisations are required to maintain a diligent information
technology tea, so that they can manage the data privacy accordingly (Bayer, Santelli and
Klitzman 2015).
2. Unauthorised access is another concern in the domain of use of EMR or EHRs.
Thus the healthcare administrations before availing or installing EMRs or EHRs system for
their organisations must strictly verify the technological stringency of the system. They are

8
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT)
also required to maintain proper information technology team in order to effectively manage
the bugs of the EMRs and also provide training to the health or the social care professionals
in proper use EMRs interface (Bayer, Santelli and Klitzman 2015).
3. Telemedicine deals with the process of procurement of the health or social care to
the patients who are separate by local, state or international boundaries. The legal
consideration that must be taken into account while procuring telemedicine is proper
verification of the registration of the health care professionals and examination of the fact that
whether they are eligible of procuring care to that particular jurisdiction in which the patient
is residing. The failure in observance of this issue may lead to international conflict
especially when the doctor is procuring care the across the national boundaries (Lokkerbol et
al. 2013).
4. While providing care to the patients via telemedicine, proper cultural
considerations must be taken into account. For example, even when procuring care remotely
proper dialect and language must be used while caring for patients from different origins or
for aboriginals. Bridging of the cultural sensitivities may lead to the generation of the health
inequalities (Lokkerbol et al. 2013)..
Thus overall it can be said that the application of ICTs in health and social care help
to reduce the overall cost of care and the efficiency of the overall care giving process.
However, proper legal norms must be taken into considerations so that the rights of privacy,
confidentiality and cultural sensitivity are not bridged.

9
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT)
References
Bayer, R., Santelli, J. and Klitzman, R., 2015. New challenges for electronic health records:
confidentiality and access to sensitive health information about parents and
adolescents. Jama, 313(1), pp.29-30.
Bosi, E., Scavini, M., Ceriello, A., Cucinotta, D., Tiengo, A., Marino, R., Bonizzoni, E. and
Giorgino, F., 2013. Intensive structured self-monitoring of blood glucose and glycemic
control in noninsulin-treated type 2 diabetes: the PRISMA randomized trial. Diabetes care,
p.DC_130092.
Carspecken, C.W., Sharek, P.J., Longhurst, C. and Pageler, N.M., 2013. A clinical case of
electronic health record drug alert fatigue: consequences for patient outcome. Pediatrics,
pp.peds-2012.
Coustasse, A., Tomblin, S. and Slack, C., 2013. Impact of radio-frequency identification
(RFID) technologies on the hospital supply chain: a literature review. Perspectives in Health
Information Management, 10(Fall).
Denny, J.C., Bastarache, L., Ritchie, M.D., Carroll, R.J., Zink, R., Mosley, J.D., Field, J.R.,
Pulley, J.M., Ramirez, A.H., Bowton, E. and Basford, M.A., 2013. Systematic comparison of
phenome-wide association study of electronic medical record data and genome-wide
association study data. Nature biotechnology, 31(12), p.1102.
Herrington, G., Zardins, Y. and Hamilton, A., 2013. A pilot trial of emergency telemedicine
in regional Western Australia. Journal of telemedicine and telecare, 19(7), pp.430-433.
Lokkerbol, J., Adema, D., Cuijpers, P., Reynolds III, C.F., Schulz, R., Weehuizen, R. and
Smit, F., 2014. Improving the cost-effectiveness of a healthcare system for depressive

10
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT)
disorders by implementing telemedicine: a health economic modeling study. The American
Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 22(3), pp.253-262.
Ong, W.M., Chua, S.S. and Ng, C.J., 2014. Barriers and facilitators to self-monitoring of
blood glucose in people with type 2 diabetes using insulin: a qualitative study. Patient
preference and adherence, 8, p.237.
Ranasinghe, D.C., Torres, R.S., Hill, K. and Visvanathan, R., 2014. Low cost and batteryless
sensor-enabled radio frequency identification tag based approaches to identify patient bed
entry and exit posture transitions. Gait & Posture, 39(1), pp.118-123.
Zarcadoolas, C., Vaughon, W.L., Czaja, S.J., Levy, J. and Rockoff, M.L., 2013. Consumers'
perceptions of patient-accessible electronic medical records. Journal of medical Internet
research, 15(8).