The Internet and Healthcare, Research Paper Example

Introduction

Health care has revealed the significance of the Internet in the field. A rapidly expanding number of Internet sites are committed to assisting clients to find information they require and make decisions concerning their health and health care. Patients are establishing communities that offer peer support, information on most recent research and individual stories concerning their experiences. Health care specialists are using the Internet for their research work and to access data and information in the field, to collaborate with their colleagues and to monitor their patients. Nearly all the health care businesses starting from insurer to hospital to pharmaceutical firms have Web sites. Though the field is laggard in information and technology, there are major innovations, fascinating experiments and lots of interest in Internet (Cain & Mittman, 2009).

Driving Forces

These are the factors that are pulling the Internet into health and health care in order to ensure that the Internet is integrated in the health care system. Some of these factors include the21st Century Health Care clients and their experiences with other fields. By 2005, most consumers especially in U.S had increased household incomes, some higher education either in colleges or in Universities and access to computer systems either at work or in their places of residence. The Health care consumes thus had an increased interest in the type of services that they received from the health care sector. They had increased levels of the choices that they made, control of the customer service and increased interactions with the health care service providers. Since they also required an increased access to information, the Internet became a necessity and not an option. Customers’ experience in other sectors such as shopping and E-mail made them require the use of the Internet to meet their expectations. Specifically, the responsiveness and choice they received from e-shopping and the interactions in the e-mail molded their expectations in the health and health care sector (Cain & Mittman, 2009).

The features of the Internet also encouraged or enforced the use of the Internet in the health care sector. The Internet as a means of health information and communications has excellent features fit to fulfill the clients’ expectations from the area. The Internet is cheap, easy to use and offers a diversity of health care information and allows its users to link with other users all over the world particularly those with common interest. The market forces around the health and health care sector also force the application of the Internet in the area. The market forces which have been of significant influence in the past ten years in the form of controlled care, employer purchasing collaborations, aggressive government payers and regulators, and client organizations have enforced the application of the Internet in the health and health care field. Web technologies which include the intranets, extranets as well as the Internet provide a low-cost, fast deployable means for dissemination of information in the incorporated health care organizations. Controlled care raised the diversity and urgency of information dissemination which had to be done through the Internet. Health care companies also use the Internet to advertise and promote their services as a means of surviving competition in the field (Cain & Mittman, 2009).

Barriers to Internet Use in the Health Care Sector

There are several factors that hinder the use of the Internet in the health care sector. Security concern is one of the main barriers to Internet usage in the field. People are keener in not only concealing their financial information but also their private information in relation to their health. Though there are technologies to protect electronic health information, the consumers’ perception of the Internet limits its use in the health and health care sector. Some features of the Internet also limit its application in the health care sector. The rapid speed of change of the Internet limits its application in the sector due to inability of health care firms to adapt to the fast changing trends. Some challenges in web browsers and search engines which include their failure to completely blend with legacy databases and particular web pages limit the application of the Internet in the health care sector (Shay, 2010).

The Internet also has a mixed quality of information which compromises with the quality of information that is available to the consumers. This uneven quality of information turns off many consumers due to unreliability of the information that they get from the Internet. Lack of resources in the development of the web also limits the application of Internet in the health care sector since most of the information systems departments in many health care firms are not web oriented. Although they are determined to have web oriented information system departments, the organizations are underfunded and are constantly in competition for the rare Web designers, technicians and engineers to install the programs (Cain & Mittman, 2009).

Application of the Internet in the Health Care System

Management of Projects

The Internet has been very useful in the planning and execution of projects. A good example is the joint project between the U.S Center for Disease Control and prevention and GE Healthcare. The project will provide individually tailored public health information and news to electronic records held by the doctors. The objective of the project is for instance to alert the doctors through their computers that a particular patient in a certain location of a particular age or sex for example, is at a risk of contracting a disease. This will enable the doctors to tae the appropriate actions to control the risk (Murero & Rice, 2006).

Natural Language Processing

The application of natural language processing, that is, the comprehension of human language to medicine is increasing significantly as the more patients can access digitalized information as opposed to paper work. Since most of the information particularly the doctors clinical notes are not I traditional databases, natural language processing tools which have been created for medical terms are important for researchers. The tools provide clues to diseases patterns and also provide suggestions on ways of improving the decision-support tools for doctors (Shay, 2010).

Discloser of Information and Transparency

The Internet has allowed the discloser of information as well as transparency in the health and health care system. The Senate health care reform bill in the U.S consists of a number of stipulations that emphasize on discloser and transparency and particularly online discloser and transparency. This is only possible due to the application of the Internet in the health care field. The stipulations in this particular bill acknowledge that information that is subject to discloser for public viewing must be posted in the net. The information will consist of reports containing quality of care provided by the insurance firms and new information on hospitals (Shay, 2010).

Conclusion

The Internet has been a useful tool in the transformation of the health care sector mainly through dissemination of information. The public is able to access information that has been posted in the Internet and thus make proper decisions concerning their healthcare. The information found on the Internet should however be used selectively since it is voluminous and overwhelming to the consumer while most of it is derived from un-trusted sources. Finally, the Internet is very important in maintenance of patient records which can then be used for future reference (Shay, 2010).

References

Cain, M. & Mittman, R. (2009). The future of the Internet in Health Care. Retrieved on February 23, 2010 from <http://www.chcf.org/documents/intreport.pdf>

Murero, M. & Rice, R. (2006). The internet and health care: theory, research, and practice. London: Routledge.

Shay, E. (2010). Evolving uses of health care on the Internet. Retrieved on February 23, 2010 from < http://www.physiciansnews.com/computers/300.html>