BLOG POST: How is Technology Affecting Healthcare?

Positive and negative aspects of the emerging healthcare technology industry’s effects on society

By: Wesley Doyle, INSC542 student at the University of Tennessee

As part of my first blog entry, I read the article “10 Ways Technology is Changing Healthcare (Mesko, 2020),” by Dr. Bertalan Mesko at The Medical Futurist. This article examines existing and emerging technologies in the healthcare sector that are assisting healthcare professionals with procedures, diagnoses, and many other healthcare needs to relieve a stressed industry.

I chose to examine this article because it tackles an emerging industry that is always in demand: healthcare technology. While the basis of healthcare technology hasn’t changed since the advances of the 20th century, I believe that newer technologies are challenging the legal and societal norms held by healthcare professionals and patients around the world.

In this article, Dr. Mesko examines 10 pieces of healthcare techology that have positively affected the field of healthcare. He also emphasizes the importance of healthcare professionals mastering the technology without being scared of its potential.

“In medicine and healthcare,” Dr. Mesko writes, “digital technology could help transform unsustainable healthcare systems into sustainable ones, equalitize the relationship between medical professionals and patients, provide cheaper, faster and more effective solutions for diseases–technologies could wiin the battle for us against cancer, AIDS or Ebola–and could simply lead to healthier individuals living in healthier communities (Mesko, 2020).”

Dr. Mesko then highlights several pieces of existing technology, such as wearable technology (i.e. sensors, smart watches, and meditation headbands), virtual reality training for existing and training surgeons in hospitals, genome sequencing to examine medical history and potential threats to your health, and nanotechnology for patches that monitor wounds (and even stimulate their healing) (Mesko, 2020).

With such advancements that have occured and continue to occur, you might be asking yourself: how can we, as a global society, keep up and maintain pace with the genie that’s already out of the bottle?

Healthcare Technology: Not All That Shimmers is Gold

With advancements in healthcare technology–specifically in the past few decades–there’s good cause to be so excited about the possibilities to truly help ailing patients across the United States; however, with all these advancements, there are a number of valid concerns surrounding patients’ privacy rights and data security worldwide.

The battle over patients’ privacy rights has been raging for decades, but a few pivotal pieces of legislation passed by U.S. Congress in the late 1990’s–including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996; the Federal Trade Commission Act; and the Children Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998 ( (Keshta & Odeh, 2021,190)--have helped U.S. patients maintain their rights to privacy in healthcare technology.

However, those challenges for patients and providers are getting more difficult as healthcare technology is merging with marketing and other capital-focused technologies offered by companies venturing into the healthcare space. For instance, think about Apple Watch storing all of your health data to eventually sell it direclty to healthcare systems for more frequently-updated vital measurements at a cheaper cost than your annual physical with the primary care doctor–it’s not too far-fetched to believe these days, is it? When you, as a user, opt-in to the full capabilities of wearable technology, it begs the question: who is privy to that primary data of your vital measurements–blood pressure, sleep tracking, blood oxygen levels, resting heart rate, etc.?

In their article titled “Security and privacy of electronic health records: concerns and challenges,” Keshta and Odeh write about the challenges that patients will continue to face as this battle over data rages on.

“Often, privacy policies are difficult to read or interpret becase of the jargon that only those who wrote them or involved in hte field can understand. Thus, app vendors should be required to deliver the agreement in a more deliver way,” the authors write. “It is imperative for users to be more careful, and to be responsible in the process of consent. Moreover, there is the need for consumers to be able to exercise their control over the technology and decide on who sees the information from mobile devices (Keshta & Odeh, 2021, 190).”

As local and national policymakers continue to examine and determine the effects of this technology on patient’s privacy rights, it will be pivotal for consumers to learn the costs of healthcare technology and data privacy–and which they might value more.

Patient Safety and Health: The True Impact of Healthcare Technology on Society in Today’s World

Like Dr. Mesko mentions in his article 10 Ways Technology is Changing Healthcare, there are a plethora of existing and emerging technologies that provide both patients and professionals the benefits of healthcare in today’s world.

For instance, in the simplest of ways, telemedicine physician visits have boomed in popularity since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic; these types of everyday, easy-to-use healthcare technologies have proven to be successful for doctor and their patients (Trenfield et al., 2022, 10.)

As with many other data-heavy instruments in the healthcare field, there is a concern for data privacy and protection in these technologies. Some were mentioned in the previous section, but healthcare experts and health information technology experts are working to protect patients’ data stored in technology such as mobile apps.

In the article titled “Exploring benefits and ethical challenges in the rise of mHealth (mobile healthcare) technology for the common good: An analysis of mobile applications for health specialists,” the Galetsi et al. provide the following information concerning the tools developed in mobile app privacy protection:

“The World Health Organization has developed the mERA instrument, a quality implementation tool that provides the guidelines to report evidence on the effectiveness of mHealth interventions including data security and confidentiality protocols" (Agarwal et al., 2016).

Another instrument for assessing mobile apps is the MARS evaluation scale. This tool can reveal the safety of mHealth apps in terms of privacy and security levels of user information, since assessment of the security and integrity of mHealth apps should include exploration of open-source developer codes for potential malicious functions (Stoyanov et al., 2015). Moreover, other general context data models for smartphone applications have been developed, such as the privacy model PM-MoDaC comprising nine proposed measures to enhance user privacy in apps related to mobile data collection (Beierle et al., 2018), (Beierle et al., 2020). (Galetsi et al., 2023.)”

With these types of tools already in existence and more being developed, it’s easy to see that the privacy concerns are being addressed in the healthcare technology field. The question remains: how quickly can these adequate protections be implemented, and will they be in place before a larger security breach occurs? There’s no real way to tell, but an emerging field such as this one will surely be a mine field for such occasions.

Conclusion

Dr. Mesko was rightfully excited about the advances in healthcare technology, but he was also very correct in his assessment of professionals’ apprehension to the developments in the field. He was correct when he wrote, “We have to familiarize with the latest developments in order to be able to control technology and not the other way around (Mesko, 2020).”

As information technology and cybersecurity professionals continue to navigate the rough terrains of data privacy and protection within these healthcare technology industries, many companies are working to better serve patients through innovate approaches to making everyone’s lives easier and longer. Whether it be through blockchain technology, wearable sensors and tech, or even simple telemedicine visits through video conferencing, it’s clear that the health information technology and service is just beginning its true service to better humankind.