The surge of new technology and advancement of digital media has enabled online forms of communication. With the emergence of these online forms of communication, business processes have been moved to the internet. Today, most business processes have become digitized and are provided online. The healthcare industry has not been left behind in this evolution. The development of online healthcare services bore the concept of e-health. Healthcare delivery is now provided online and people do not have to meet their doctors and nurses physically in order to get this care. One area of e-health is the online pharmacies, where people purchase drugs over the internet. The prescription for these drugs and medication are also done online. The convenience of it is that distance has totally been killed and one can get treatment instructions from a doctor located miles away in another continent. These practices are enabled by the digital media forms of communication such as social media and electronic mails. The surge of online pharmacies and internet-based prescription of drugs is prevalent in the United States and Canada. Although it comes with massive benefits, the online prescription of drugs and buying medicine over the internet poses huge dangers to societies in Canada and the United States.
Assess and discuss how digital media play an influential part for each country
Considering the technological advancement in the United States of America and Canada, there have been drastic changes of the healthcare industry in these two countries driven by digital media. E-health has greatly been developed in the United States of America. It is vital to understand that E-health is a very broad term where digital media is of great significance. E-health entails things like the electronic medical records, mobile technology for home monitoring and the electronic health-surveillance systems.
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There are various e-health application categories. The first category is use of technology that is distance-spanning through telemedicine and the virtual visits. Virtual visits are conducted through means like video consultations, the remote diagnostics and telehomecare (Bessell et al., 2003). The second category entails use of electronic documentation of the hospital data and information. This category has technologies like the electronic health records, surveillance systems and electronic prescriptions. Furthermore, the term e-health is also used in reference to the electronic forms of communication used to exchange healthcare information among the various stakeholders in this industry. Examples, in this case, include the expert consultations that are always conducted using video-conferencing, tele-radiology and the internet-based home speech therapy. Furthermore, smartphones are also coming up with applications meant to enhance the field of mobile-health. This paper concentrates on the online pharmacies in U.S.A. and Canada as the basic type of e-health. Online pharmacies involve internet-based prescription of drugs, which is done by the online doctors, and purchase of the medicines prescribed over the internet.
Various digital forms of communication are used in facilitating the online purchase of drugs. The common form of digital media communication that has major impact on the processes of buying drugs online is electronic mail. The online doctors as well as pharmacists communicate with clients through e-mails. The client simply describes his health condition in an e-mail text and receives a feedback regarding the prognosis and diagnosis of the information given and decision on the most likely type of sickness. Therefore, the online doctor prescribes specific drugs for the sick client through the e-mail communication. Thereafter, the client gets in contact with an online pharmacy, where he or she buys drugs. This practice has become the cause of major societal health problems and high number of deaths has been reported in the United States of America and Canada.
The form of digital media communication that plays a very important role in buying of drugs from online pharmacies in Canada and U.S.A is social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook. Social media has a significant impact in facilitating online purchasing of drugs over the internet in these two countries. Most online doctors advertise their services through social media. Moreover, many of the online pharmacies in Canada and the United States are accessible through social media networks. The first meeting between the operators of online pharmacies and the potential clients usually takes place on social media networks. The nature of these meetings is normally abstract.
It is vital to understand the fact that digital media forms of communication have the limitation of lack of physical meeting and engagement between the conversing parties. Communication done through digital media mechanisms is done over the internet. This particular factor is the source of the social problems associated with buying drugs from the online pharmacies in both the United States of America and Canada. There is huge amount of crucial information that is missed by both the patient and the online pharmacists when drugs are bought over the internet. The crucial information that is always missed is the source of the societal problems that are linked to buying drugs from the online pharmacies in Canada and United States.
In both the United States of America and Canada, e-health is also a major trend today. The use of electronic medical records and other forms of technology to make the process of delivering medical services easy is now on its high in the United States of America. This country is among the most developed nations in terms of ICT around the whole world. Moreover, it takes pride into its talented and effective research scientists who are leading the innovation actions within the medical care sector.
In Canada, the biggest problem of buying from the online pharmacies is the deaths witnessed because of fake drugs. There has been a surge of fake online pharmacies leading to a public outcry. Buyers are hoodwinked into purchasing fake medicine simply packaged in misleading labels. The limitation of e-health, which uses the digital media communication techniques, is that the patient or client has no chance of physically verifying the veracity and legitimacy of the products being offered (Spain, Siegel & Ramsey, 2001). Therefore, buyers simply purchase what they are given with the only information to consider being the words of the online pharmacist.
In the United States of America, the biggest problem has been the issue of fake online pharmacies. Most online pharmacies being operated through the internet are not licensed by the government of the U.S.A. However, they simply lie to purchasers that they are legitimate operators. The limitation faced by the patients or clients is that they rely on the digital media communication techniques, which do not offer them the opportunity to ascertain the credibility and legitimacy of these operators.
Additionally, clients have to receive prescription as they buy the drugs. With the use of the digital media forms of communication such as e-mails, it is very possible to have the buyer misinterpret or confuse the words of the pharmacist or online doctor. This scenario leads to misuse of drugs and arising of other serious health complications to the society. The digital forms of communication do not involve the opportunity for demonstration of processes of taking or using medicine. Moreover, clients have minimal chance of seeking clarification about the prescription given to them. Clients are simply struggling to differentiate between the real and fake online pharmacies.
Propose solutions
Online pharmacies are a good development if used properly. Various actions have to be taken in order to ensure the benefits promised by online pharmacies are realized in Canada and U.S.A. The first solution is enhancing the online checks by the two governments to make sure that there is no provider offering fake and unlicensed drugs to clients. It is vital to make sure that all the drugs offered by online pharmacies arte registered and evaluation by the government (Ivanitskaya & Brookins-Fisher, 2010). The government needs to come up with a unique feature to be included on every drug package as an identification of real and legitimate medicines for the clients.
Secondly, there must be clear effort aimed at ensuring fake pharmacies do not set up operations online on the back of the governments. The United States government needs to put up strict measures aimed at ensuring all pharmacies selling drugs to clients are licensed and run by qualified pharmacists. Through effective digital tracking techniques, it is possible to keep watch on all online pharmacies in the United States of America.
Counter-argument and rebuttal
There is a counter-argument is that virtual visits are not effective in solving the health problems of the sick. Some critics analyze that critical health complications demand the physical meeting of the victim and the nurse or doctor for effective and proper attention to be administered. Therefore, this argument discredits the use of e-health as an ineffective way of dealing with the health of human beings. This practice is termed as a prevarication of the medical practitioners in their roles of providing healthcare to patients. It is further argued that the life and health of a human being is too important to be treated virtually using internet.
Such counter-arguments are simply held by conservatives who do not recognize and appreciate the evolution taking place within the healthcare industry. It must be noted that the healthcare industry is on a speedy evolution and scientists are innovating new technologies aimed at prompt response to health issues within the society (Fung, Woo & Asch, 2004). This new technology is moving towards the virtual provision of healthcare using the internet. It is a positive thing because its net effect is speed and responsive attention to the health needs of the sick and saving of lives within the required and most appropriate time. Sticking to the traditional physical methods of providing healthcare, leads to delays and massive release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Action—what next steps need to be taken?
Policymakers in the United States and Canada must move toward the large-scale implementation of e-health. Although the number of tele-medicine programs is on a constant growth path in Canada and U.S., the development rate for e-health poorly reflects the diffusion of the ICT-based services in the real clinical use. People must seek ways of overcoming the different obstacles that stand in the way of implementing e-health as the efficient and effective strategy for mitigation and adaptation to problems of fake online pharmacies in Canada and U.S.A.
There is need for the development of the required infrastructure for massive adoption of e-health in these two countries. Proper functioning of e-health requires that the two countries invest massively in the ICT sector. Let the governments in Canada and U.S.A. also create systems for independent and objective monitoring as well as evaluation of the programs aimed at determining the real environmental benefit from the adoption of e-health. It is also important to address the question of the right formula for dividing benefits and costs when technology is applied in sharing information among the medical practitioners. What needs to be noted is that the introduction of tele-medicine will bring about significant benefits to both countries.
Another thing that needs to be considered is the variation in standards of health technology resources in various regions. In the United States, the different states have varied levels of development in healthcare sector. This scenario is the same in Canada, where various regions have different standards of healthcare development. Therefore, some areas may manage to implement e-health technologies while others could simply be unable to invest in this field. It is important for the two governments to ensure the healthcare resources are standardized in all the regions and states (Veronin & Youan, 2004). All regions must be afforded the right resources to implement e-health technologies.
It is also important to create awareness in two things in order to achieve both political goodwill and popular support for the proposed solutions in the two nations. The first thing, which must be done, is creating awareness about the reality of fake online pharmacies. There is a class of people who deny the presence of fake online pharmacies. In worst circumstances, it is the political leaders of nations. For instance, the current President of the United States who argues against the presence of fake online pharmacies. This group of people needs to be educated and convinced that fake online pharmacies are a reality. In this case, scientists need to be involved so that they show empirical evidence of the existence of fake online pharmacies reality. When the whole country is made to understand that there are fake online pharmacies, the measures taken by policymakers to mitigate it normally receive massive support. There must be awareness created to make people know the benefits and significance of e-health in mitigating fake online pharmacies. To win the political goodwill and popular support from the masses in the country, policymakers must embark on programs aimed at explaining the verifiable benefits of e-health technologies. The current opposition to the implementation of e-health technologies is the reason for the poor achievements made by U.S. and Canada in this area.
It must be understood that one way through which e-health can be promoted is by creating national policies aimed at giving incentives for mitigation and adaptation actions. It is known that governments, which integrate e-health in their policy documents, create the strong basis for its adoption in their health sectors. Therefore, Canada and the United States must enshrine e-health technologies in their policy documents to increase chances of actual adoption.
It must be known that there are many green ICT initiatives, which offer strategies for the reduction of carbon in the atmosphere. However, their application within the healthcare sector must be done circumspectly because some of them have very little impact on the medical industry. This lack of impact is simply because of the lack of awareness among the policymakers.
The role of motivation must also be considered. Motivation to apply technology will always be enhanced when regular evaluations and assessments of the e-health technologies implanted show great reductions on the greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, the health sector can then serve as an effective model for other sectors of the economy targeting to implement ways of mitigating global warming.
Regulation of e-health must be considered in order to mitigate problem caused by online pharmacies in the United States and Canada. It has to be known that effectiveness of e-health as a positive development depends on the kind of service and the durability of the applied technology. Specifically, Canada and the United States should apply tele-medicine e-health technology in order to reduce the costs of accessing medical care. Tele-medicine has the ability of reducing costs through enabling minimal traveling and transportation. Many healthcare costs are incurred when health care personnel engage in traveling by way of vehicles like the ambulances. Most of these vehicles use fossil fuels such as diesel, which are quite expensive. This diesel releases carbon monoxide after combustion to produce energy used to propel the locomotive (Quon, Firszt & Eisenberg, 2005). The tele-medicine technologies involve home care medical programs as well as the outpatient consultations. These kinds of treatment minimize traveling.
It can be noted that the tele-medicine program located at UC Davis, California has brought about the savings of 4.7 million miles of travel. Similar outcomes have been reported in Canada (Mackey, Aung & Liang, 2015). Therefore, this particular e-health technology is quite effective in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and can be intensively implemented in the two countries to have enhanced mitigation of the healthcare cost problem. Research has established that telecare can replace over 11 million home visits to patients by the nurses. Consequently, a reduction of 120 million km of travel would be achieved (Schmidt & Grimm, 2009). It can be seen that when analyzed from a large-scale point of view, the benefits of e-health as a cost mitigation strategy. However, the potential to reduce costs will always remain dependent on various factors. These factors include the number of users, distance and type of transportation replaced by the e-health technology.
E-health is a form of digital media that has a major role in addressing the problem of high healthcare costs. The United States and Canada, which both suffer greatly from the problem of fake online pharmacies, must seek effective ways of implementing the right e-health technologies as mitigation and adaptation strategies. To reap maximum benefits from e-health technologies, these two governments must only target the health sector. Resources must be channeled into these initiatives and awareness of great benefits targeted crated to earn political and popular goodwill. In implementing these initiatives, policymakers must expect opposition from the people who do not believe in the reality of the societal loss because of the fake online pharmacies. Most of them are members of the political class. Therefore, the use of empirical studies and evidence to convince such resistive minds is important.
Conclusion
People expect huge benefits from the use of online pharmacies in both Canada and the United States of America. It is true that the introduction of online pharmacies in both the United States and Canada was meant to increase accessibility to drugs by reduction costs. Costs targeted include traveling expenses over long distances to obtain special and rare medicine as well as the transportation. While some of these benefits have been achievable overtime, the limitations of digital media communication mechanisms like e-mails and social media networks have brought huge negative effects of online pharmacies in Canada and the United States of America. It is important to recognize the fact that digital media communication technologies have the greatest influence on e-health services such as online pharmacies (Orizio et al., 2011). The major limitation of digital media communication is that there is physical meeting between the online pharmacist and the buyer. Therefore, the chance for verifying the legitimacy of products and credibility of the provider is ever missing. Therefore, buyers are left vulnerable and facing the risk of purchasers fake drugs from the licensed online pharmacists or purchasing medicine from unlicensed operators. There is also the danger of failing to get the right prescription since it is done online. This poses great danger to the society, which can be solved through effective government regulatory intervention.
References
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