Introduction
Improving the quality of patient care in medical institutions can be done in many ways, including creating applications that allow tracking the recovery process and conducting appropriate interventions. Patients’ health status is a critical parameter that doctors and nurses should constantly monitor. However, patients also have the right to know all the data about their current health status to participate in managing their health status. Although such an invention benefits many people, it has some negative aspects.
Advantages of Healthcare Facility Apps
The advantage of health monitoring applications is primarily to increase the involvement of patients in the recovery process. When people in a clinic are often unaware of their current state of health, this can negatively affect their mental state. Doctors regularly tell patients what is happening to them, but this information is not updated constantly, and there are long pauses between doctors’ visits. Health monitoring applications fill this gap by giving people constant information about their bodies (Kapoor et al., 2020). Thus, patients have the opportunity to control how the treatment process proceeds.
Another positive aspect is the improvement in the convenience and accessibility of obtaining information during treatment. Users can access medical information in the hospital and from home without visiting a medical facility. Thus, this significantly saves time and frees people from visiting the clinic regularly to find out their state of health. In addition, the application allows users to communicate with doctors and healthcare providers from anywhere, which also contributes to a more trusting relationship (Gordon et al., 2020). This can ease the burden on the health care infrastructure and make consultation easier and cheaper if the problem does not require severe analysis or intervention.
Another plus is personalization since applications have an individual character, adapting to the person who uses them. Such programs can, for example, send notifications to patients about the time of taking medications or about an appointment with a doctor in a clinic, which positively affects clients’ health (Kapoor et al., 2020). It also allows people not to put off their important things or worry about remembering the appointment time. Tracking and analyzing health data can always be delivered to individuals through their phones, opening up more thorough health monitoring and care opportunities. Indicators such as pressure, pulse, or physical activity can be read to ensure a person’s well-being by providing information about all parameters.
Disadvantages of Healthcare Facility Apps
However, while health-tracking apps have many positives, a few downsides can detract from the user experience. For example, equipment availability and technological difficulties are among the factors. Implementing an application in a healthcare system can create difficulties for people not versed in modern technologies. Elderly patients or people with low financial security will not always be able to use such applications, creating a gap in opportunities for citizens. Age restrictions, such as visual or cognitive impairments, can seriously affect people’s ability to use applications. Since elderly patients are often the primary target audience for health monitoring, implementing such programs may not have the desired effect (Vo et al., 2019). Underserved communities may also face challenges in not being able to use technology to track their health fully. Some patients may not have access to a smartphone or the internet, making it impossible to download the required app.
Another significant drawback concerns the privacy and security of the data stored by the application. Since these programs have access to all patient information for analysis, this system can be hacked by intruders. However, the theft of personal data and medical and treatment records is an aspect that medical institutions should avoid in all cases (Pradhan et al., 2021). Protecting data systems appropriately can be quite a complex and costly process that requires precise implementation of data protection systems. Incidents of theft or hacking of such applications can lead to an increase in people’s distrust not only in such technologies but also in a deterioration in attitudes towards medical institutions.
Another obstacle is the potential lack of language proficiency or necessary medical literacy. This may be disadvantageous for groups of migrants who live in the United States but do not speak English well enough to navigate medical records. This category can prevent people from thoroughly enjoying health-related applications (Vo et al., 2019).
Thus, it is crucial to adapt programs more widely so that they are accessible to all people, regardless of their background or level of knowledge in medicine. However, implementing this is quite complex; therefore, applications are currently not designed for less enlightened patients. Ignorance of medical topics can backfire and hurt people who use these applications.
Conclusion
In conclusion, medical applications have some advantages that help significantly facilitate patient health care. Thus, they can improve the condition of people with the necessary skills to use the program. However, there are categories of people, such as elderly patients and immigrants, who do not benefit from using such applications. This can increase inequality in society, reinforcing it in that many citizens will not be able to benefit from the program.
References
Gordon, W. J., Landman, A., Zhang, H., & Bates, D. W. (2020). Beyond validation: getting health apps into clinical practice. NPJ digital medicine, 3(1), 14. Web.
Kapoor, A., Guha, S., Das, M. K., Goswami, K. C., & Yadav, R. (2020). Digital healthcare: The only solution for better healthcare during COVID-19 pandemic?. Indian Heart Journal, 72(2), 61-64. Web.
Pradhan, B., Bhattacharyya, S., & Pal, K. (2021). IoT-based applications in healthcare devices. Journal of healthcare engineering, 2021, 1-18. Web.
Vo, V., Auroy, L., & Sarradon-Eck, A. (2019). Patients’ perceptions of mHealth apps: meta-ethnographic review of qualitative studies. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 7(7), e13817. Web.