Healthcare is constantly evolving, in the last 50 years, we’ve seen huge breakthroughs and advancements that have helped to stop once fatal diseases and illness being the danger they once were.
But, is there still room for improvement? When it comes to the world of digital, it would seem so.
What is eHealth?
If you’re sat there wondering, what exactly is eHealth? You’ll be surprised to find that it’s pretty straight forward.
eHealth or the eObservations module as it has also been referred to is a new way of recording patient information. While those working in the health industry will be used to writing down patient information, chances are, while many items of information have been moved onto a database, they’re probably still working from written patient records. This is particularly true for nurses and doctors providing bed care and working from paper charts.
However, eObservations help to remove the need for paper charts for nurses and the need to manually calculate information to help determine warning scores. This is due to these digital systems recording it all and calculating it there and then quickly and succinctly, which also brings a whole load of benefits with it.
Benefits to staff
The biggest benefit will come to the staff, who won’t need to write pieces of information down and calculate them there and then. While the information put down will be correct, human error could occur, which could put a patient in danger, which would never be the intention of a member of staff.
Also, when pieces of information are handwritten, the variations in handwriting could prove tricky for someone to understand, which is immediately eradicated through a simplified digital interface.
Benefits to administration
While the digital systems will help to improve things on the ward for nurses and doctors, it will also help when it comes to administration.
The storing and filing on patient information can be a long and strenuous task, especially with there being so many patients to account for at any one time. We also know that the NHS is under a lot of strain at the moment with staff cuts and high waiting times. This is what makes these systems all the better for everyone involved, as they automatically store the information into a digital system, which can be called on at any time through the interface, rather than having to dig through a wealth of paper documents to find a piece of information.
Benefits to science
Finally, the biggest benefit, in the long run, is the benefit these systems will provide to the world of science.
With the world of digital technology is advancing at a rapid pace, systems are getting better and better year after year. This means that as this happens and more and more data is stored, scientists will be able to access the data to better inform medical trials, which in turn could speed up the creation of new medicines, which usually take 10 to 15 years to come to market.
As you can see, while digital has been advancing our lives for two decades now, it seems there’s still room for improvement when it comes to the world of healthcare.
The Editorial Team at Healthcare Business Today is made up of skilled healthcare writers and experts, led by our managing editor, Daniel Casciato, who has over 25 years of experience in healthcare writing. Since 1998, we have produced compelling and informative content for numerous publications, establishing ourselves as a trusted resource for health and wellness information. We offer readers access to fresh health, medicine, science, and technology developments and the latest in patient news, emphasizing how these developments affect our lives.
