The use of information technology in medicine is not new, but in developing countries, it is still at the implementation stage. Lack of specific and professional training programs, as a highlighted weakness, and shortage of human resources and untrained staff, as an external threat factor, have common roots (Arshad et al., 2017). The causes of these problems lie in the general health care system, from education to highly qualified specialists. In challenging crises, the authorities are moving to attract young students to medical universities, as was the case during the pandemic (Torda, 2020). Information technologies provide many opportunities not only for the direct operational activities of doctors but also for educational processes that precede qualifying work—for example, improving specific skills through remote courses or the ability to manually work with an integrated knowledge system, having relevant competencies on the market.
This problem, however, is also observed in developed countries. The U.S. has also been experiencing a long-term shortage of staff, which worsened during the pandemic, even though the country’s healthcare costs are the highest in the world (Zhang et al., 2020). Differences with Pakistan are manifested in the levels of application of information technology, again due to the enormous difference in costs. Nevertheless, implementing promising solutions in the field of education should not be limited only to technological resources; it requires infrastructural intervention from the leadership and even the state. Given that these factors are also included in the weaknesses in Pakistan, they have a long way to go to level the risks of such threats. The United States, in turn, has more opportunities to solve them, but the larger scale creates problems of a different kind, for example, burnout or financial provision of the budget.
References
Arshad, A., Noordin, M. F., & Othman, R. (2017). A synthesis on swot analysis of public sector healthcare knowledge management information systems in Pakistan. Management, 8(8), 130-6.
Torda, A. (2020). How COVID‐19 has pushed us into a medical education revolution. Internal Medicine Journal, 50(9), 1150-1153. Web.
Zhang, X., Lin, D., Pforsich, H., & Lin, V. W. (2020). Physician workforce in the United States of America: forecasting nationwide shortages.Human Resources for Health, 18(1), 1-9. Web.