Free Business Free

“The clinic patient was diagnosed with a fractured neck. The treatment: a halo brace, a clunky contraption which encloses the head, immobilizes the neck and should be put on “for a long while,”.

The patient’s wife, however, desired to comprehend why they just couldn’t operate and fix the difficulty instead.

“So the neurosurgeon drawn up the patient’s CT scan on the computer and told her they’d need to put screws in his neck that would prevent him from being able to turn his head,” recalled Gerhardt. “She understood then.”
While the surgeon’s clarification sealed the deal, he relied heavily on computer technology to scroll through a series of scans, zooming in on the break to make his case.

Since about 2006, technology has penetrate its way into just about every corner of the University Health System, the county-owned health-care system that operates the 500-bed University Hospital and conducts more than 550,000 outpatient visits annually.

Just about everything the system’s doctors and nurses do these days is done electronically, and its computers process 6 million physician orders annually. With banks of servers keeping 13 million relaxed data and counting, UHS is seen as a national leader in the use of technology to deliver health care.

The hospital system is fully networked, so doctors can access health data, lab results, X-rays — just about everything — in the hospital, at home, from a mobile device. And because these records are electronic, they’re much less likely to be misfiled or lost.

The network even permits machines to talk to the staff.

More than 300 refrigerators, for example, have monitors that send an alert if the temp inside rises too high or falls too low. On weekends, they’ll even page clinic managers should something go awry.

Now and other hospital systems are jumping into the high-tech pool, too.

The hospital system is scheduled to be completely electronic by the end of 2012.

Technology’s touch is all over the place at UHS. Physicians on rounds cart along a COW, or computer on wheels, that takes the place of a stack of paperwork they’d previous carried with them.

With the COW, they can order lab tests, write prescriptions, update medical records. And when they do, it happens instantaneously.
And the technology continues to develop.

“Soon after the Android Tablets came out, we had doctors coming in saying, ‘Can I use this to get onto the network?’” said Phillips. “We’ve been waiting for a ‘magic device’ that would free doctors from being tethered to a computer, and this is THAT device.”

In the same way doctors can entry the hospital network from any computer in the world, they can also do so from an Android Tablets.
And simply because Android Tablets commonly cost less compared to laptops, Phillips said the hospital will begin buying Android Tablets or similar tablets as it replaces computers.

For all these efforts, it still hasn’t been proven no matter whether Electronics Gadgets actually increases patient care. But that might be because the technology is still relatively new.
This is one piece of the puzzle that matches in with everything we comprehend about enhancing care by preventing errors and such. But it’s too soon to say that doing X will save Y number of lives.