Since the invention of computers, there have been increased productivity and improvement and quality of work. Computers have been adopted in offices, laboratories, industries and also in households. Today every industry has or is adopting information technology in carrying out their daily activities. However, the healthcare industry is exhibiting a rather sluggish trend in its adoption as studies reveal. This can be attributed to the fact that healthcare sector deals with human life, the expensive nature of IT and its incorporation in healthcare and clinics operations and the data security risks that IT infrastructure is predisposed to.
Firstly, the risk involved in healthcare is so considerable, given that it deals with human life. Medical professionals put into consideration the effect that a faulty software may have to a patient in a hospital. For instance, a poorly programmed or untailored software may end up administering the wrong prescription or giving false laboratory results, and this makes hospitals and clinics to shy away from hasty IT adoption. Also, some medical conditions like cancer require that healthcare providers to have a vast IT experience and such complexity makes the doctors shun technology ("Why Are Health Care Organizations Slow To Adopt Patient-Facing Digital Technologies? | Health Affairs", 2019).
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Secondly, customized software for hospitals and clinics are generally expensive. This cost links to the purchase of the software itself and contriving the software to address specific issues in the hospital, besides putting into consideration the fact that software will be used by professionals who will require training on how to use it. Additionally, the return on investment in such technologies is not guaranteed, and they take an enormous amount of time to appreciate (Yeung, 2019).
Lastly, since data security is paramount in the healthcare industry, patients medical records need to kept confidential, away from unauthorized access. IT systems are easy to target for hackers who might steal patient's health records. These hackers may then demand ransom to release such data and this may cause a huge breach in data integrity. Therefore, this reason drives the hospitals' management towards skepticism about adopting IT ("Why Health Care Innovation Lags (And What to Do about It) | Health Affairs", 2019). In sum, while technology is an accelerator of productivity and quality of service, the healthcare system should take contemplate before deciding the IT to implement for the reason that health is important than technological advancement. However, with enhanced computing capabilities, the healthcare sector is expected to reconsider its skepticism about IT adoption.
References
Why Health Care Organizations Are Slow To Adopt Patient-Facing Digital Technologies? |
Health Affairs. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20190301.476734/full/
Why Health Care Innovation Lags (And What To Do About It) | Health Affairs. (2019).
Retrieved from https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20160803.056031/full/
Yeung, T. (2019). Local health department adoption of electronic health records and health
information exchanges and its impact on population health. International Journal of Medical Informatics . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2019.04.011
