Page 5 - THE ORACLE MAGAZINE October'23 EDITION

As evident by simply sitting at home and ordering
our favourite foods from restaurants to our
doorstep, technology is central to the way we go
about our daily lives. While technology's involvement
in the food industry with the rise of ordering apps
has only slight setbacks for the businesses and
customers involved, the same cannot be said about
its implementation in healthcare.
The simplest and most common way we can
encounter modern technology and how it evolved in
the healthcare industry, patient care in particular,
may be through the digital records kept on a
patient's medical history. This is a feature that we
usually would not question, as it was established in
1972, and at first glance seems like the most logical
and convenient way for information to be organized
and accessible, especially in medical emergencies.
While that remains true, even such a fundamental
aspect of the majority of health systems raises
issues, mainly on the controversial topic of
surveillance.
Even though it is a great aid in keeping track of
patient's data, which is necessary to an extent, issues
regarding the availability of this information to
external parties and on patients' privacy have been
raised. This is mainly in the case of surveying patients
to gain data regarding the whole population, which
is often done to determine the infectiousness and/or
commonality of different types of diseases or
conditions. Such data is, however, often taken
without providing detailed information to the
patient about what will be done with their details. In
some instances, consent for collection is not even
sought out. This is, among professionals,
“provoking
debates about whether this constitutes an
unjustified infringement of privacy or autonomy
rights although it allows the production of a more
complete and reliable data set.
” (Klingler et al., 2017)
Generally, this concept is one that most likely does not
strike people as controversial, and they aren't
necessarily worried about their health data being
collected, meaning it is a relatively restrained example
of the setbacks of technology in the industry. For the
most part, current tech that is in widespread, global
use is similarly subdued. However, in the near future
healthcare may become much more digitalized, and
even mechanized. While this will greatly help in the
efficiency of distributing and recording care, which
would benefit both patients and health professionals,
it will lead to the depersonalisation of healthcare,
ridding it of a central and key characteristic of the field.
The severity of this issue will vary based on the extent
of the implementation of technology. A seemingly
small aspect of such mechanics that we can already
experience today are digital prescriptions and digital
and mechanised medicine administration. Being able
to receive a prescription online as well as the
possibility of the medication being delivered to one's
house or being picked up with minimal human
interaction, limits or eliminates such exchanges
between people, and removes the additional expertise
and aid pharmacists can provide.
Tech in
healthcare:
Revolution or
Risk?
04
THE ORACLE MAGAZINE
by Karla Vacková