Information Technology Assignment: Use Of Smart-Phones In Healthcare Industry
Question
Task:
Prepare a detailed information technology assignment report on the Use of smart-phones in Healthcare Industry.
Answer
Use of smart-phones in Healthcare Industry
The present information technology assignment talks about how the usage of smart-phones has revolutionized the business world tremendously and in the same way these gadgets have taken the central place in the healthcare industry. Mobile technology has the great potential to improve further the quality of healthcare sector’s services. Smartphone usage has facilitated easy and quick passage of information from one end to another at any point of time and from anywhere. However, it also raises certain challenges and risks for the users of mobile technology in healthcare industry such as physicians, nurses, patients and so on. Especially, for the patients it causes various security and privacy concerns. The benefit of smartphone’s use could be heavily undermined if the abuse and its over usage is not kept in regular check.
In the modern world, healthcare organisations maintains medical records of their patients using the M-health technology whereby data is stored in electronic devices such as smartphones and tablets (Luxton, McCann, Bush, Mishkind, & Reger, 2011). These medical records contain the private and personal information of the patients, their photos for the purpose of provision of clinical care services to the patients or any other decision making in the related areas (Chen,Park, & Putzer, 2010).. Such record might be highly sensitive in nature and might affect the patient and the medical organizations if it is lost or leaked. It might cause the medical organizations various disciplinary, regulatory or criminal actions. Hence, in today’s world protection of patient’s privacy has become a key issue due to increasing number of data-attacks.
There is high potential of data security breaches while using mobile technology as mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets are more vulnerable to the risk of being hacked, stolen or lost. Therefore, recording, maintaining and transferring patient related information or pictures on various platforms such as Google plus, Facebook, Dropbox, iCloud and so on. The sensitive and private data can easily go public if proper safeguards are not present there.
It is quite known by far that the most of the information whether it is related to physiological, behavioral or social status of the patient, collected and stored in the Health systems is quite personal. Hence such data must remain confidential and when it is used for research purposes it must be made available unanimously where the individual identities of the patients are not traceable from the data. Therefore, the most common privacy risk in relation to smartphone usage in healthcare industry is Anonymization. Though it is believed that mobile sensor data and information provides the researchers an unprecedented opportunity to make quantification of complex dynamics in medical areas such as biological, psychological, physical, behavioral factors of diseases but at the same time mobile sensor information can also lead to disclosure of patient’s private information (Moore & Jayewardene, 2014). For instance, GPS features in smartphones make it possible data in context of geo-exposures and the movement patterns of the patients such as their physical activities, driving patterns. The GPS feature cannot only reveal the identity of the user but also the places visited by them which are sometimes quite private. Thus, sharing raw form of mobile sensor data raises re-identification risk.
Secondly, there is another risk relate to behavioral privacy of the patients. Measurements taken using the mobile devices can certainly provide unique visibility to the client’s health status, stress level, addictive behavior, sedentary behavior and various other factors which thereby help the medical researchers in understanding the etiology of various complex human diseases in the better way (Boulos, Wheeler, Tavares, & Jones, 2011). However, such sharing of data casts privacy risks and challenges for the healthcare entities. For instance, data recorded in audio form in mobile phones could reveal about the controversial and emotional characteristics, exposure to video games and other playing activities but it could also disclose the private and intimate information of the patients.
Further, usage of smartphones in healthcare industry also carries the risk of continuous and the unintended sensing. Continuous streaming of long term data from different sensors help the healthcare professionals to gather useful health related information about the users and their behavioral patterns. For instance, continuously reviewing the audio recordings of the patients in case of theraphists sessions improves their marital relations with their spouses. However, it can lead to capturing and unrevealing of private and non-consenting conversations.
From the above discussion, it can now be established that use of smartphones can actually bring dramatic growth and success to the healthcare industry of an economy but at the same time it can impose certain risks and challenges for the users of such technology. Mobile devices such as smartphones are mobile in their very nature and hence they are more prone to the risk of loss of device, data hacking on the phones, data loss or damage etc. Medical professionals stores important medical data of their clients on the smartphones which is sensitive and personal in nature to a significant level and hence if it is lost or leaked it can cause them huge repercussions such as disciplinary actions, loss of image and so on.
References:
Boulos, M. N. K., Wheeler, S., Tavares, C., & Jones, R. (2011). How smartphones are changing the face of mobile and participatory healthcare: an overview, with example from eCAALYX. Biomedical engineering online, 10(1), 24.
Chen, J., Park, Y., & Putzer, G. J. (2010). An examination of the components that increase acceptance of smartphones among healthcare professionals. Information technology assignment Electronic journal of health informatics, 5(2), 16.
Luxton, D. D., McCann, R. A., Bush, N. E., Mishkind, M. C., & Reger, G. M. (2011). mHealth for mental health: Integrating smartphone technology in behavioral healthcare. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 42(6), 505.
Moore, S., & Jayewardene, D. (2014). The use of smartphones in clinical practice. Nursing Management, 21(4).
