2010

[EFFECT OF IT ON HEALTH SECTOR ]

Table of Contents

Page

Chapter 1 – Introduction 1

1.1 Health Disparities 1

1.2 Information Technology impact on healthcare industry 1

1.2.1 Patient-Centric IT 2

1.2.2 IT instruments in medical sector . 2

1.3 The Insurance and Society impact in heath and Medical 2

1.3.1 Health Insurance 3

1.3.2 Private Insurance and Free-Market Health Care 3

1.3.3 Publicly Funded Health Care 3

Chapter 2 - Positive Approach of IT on the Health Sector 4

2.1 Introduction 4

2.2 Learning & Researching Advancement Through the Technology 4

2.2.1 Invention of New Medicines & Drugs 5

2.2.2 Invention of New Medical Equipments 5

2.2.3 Rise of the Expert Systems on the Health Sector 6

2.3 Social Awareness on Health towards the Technology 7

2.4 Summary 7

Chapter 3- Health issues related with information technology. 8

3.1 Introduction 8

3.2 IT enabled genetic engineering and health problems 8

3.3 Mobile phone usage and health issues 9

3.4 IT improves the manufacturing of alcohol (“Evil of health”) 9

3.5 Playing computer games and health hazards 10

3.6 Pornography and health issues 10

3.7 General diseases occurred in usage of computers 11

3.7.1 Repetitive strain injury 11

3.7.2 Computer vision syndrome (CVS) 11

3.8 Summary

Work Breakdown Structure 12

iii

Chapter 1

Introduction

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines heath as " a state of complete physical, mental and

social well-being, and does not consist only of the absence of disease or infirmity". Different cultures

have different healthy aspects. In some cultures, larger body sizes are seen as a sign of healthiness as it

indicates an individual has a preponderance of food. In other cultures, largess is more closely

associated with unhealthy lifestyles. Today the healthy practices were not emphasized prior to clear

understandings of disease and the contributions of lifestyles to health. Heath care is an industry

associated with the prevention, treatment, and management of illness along with the promotion of

mental and physical well-being through the services offered by the medical and allied health

professions. The sociology of health and medicine is concerned with the distribution of healthcare

services globally, in particular inequalities in healthcare, and how conceptions of health have changed

over time. While technology has advanced the practice of medicine and generally improved health, not

all people have the same access to health care or the same quality of health care.

1.1 Health Disparities

There are a number of ways in which health disparities play out based on different systems of

stratification. Health disparities resulting from economic stratification are wide-ranging. Poorer women

have reduced access to mammograms to detect breast cancer, even when they are better candidates for

screening. Wealthier people live longer than poorer people. The more educated people are more likely

to take advantages of advances in medical science and technology and have seen a more rapid decline

in smoking rates, which directly improves health. Disparities in health care between the rich and poor

are not inevitable - they are directly correlated with disparities in wealth. The differential and unequal

treatment of the rich and poor follows the gap between the rich and the poor. Financial access to health

care is not the only factor that affects health; poorer people are generally less likely to exercise,

resulting in overall poorer health as well. This is probably due to fewer opportunities to exercise and a

less well-developed understanding of the importance exercise. Poorer individuals also live in more

dangerous neighborhoods and are more likely to eat unhealthy food and engage in risky or unhealthy

behavior, all of which contributes to poorer health.

1.2 Information Technology impact on healthcare industry

Information Technology's role in providing high quality healthcare is rapidly growing industry. It is

very essential to provide services to these healthcare sectors. As Information Technology increasingly

penetrates the healthcare industry, physicians and patients are experiencing the benefits of on-demand

access to medical information where, when and how it is needed. Facilitating the flow of information

1

within a healthcare organization is becoming a quality differentiator among healthcare providers

competing in the GCC region. The development of IT is very helpful for the patients and the

physicians. So the doctor can identify the disease easily. It is also easy to handle the patients according

to their diseases. There are so many IT instruments to find the diseases.

1.2.1 Patient-Centric IT

Recent advances in IT are enabling providers to improve the quality of patient care. Today's healthcare

IT is much more than traditional isolated computers and unfriendly applications. Increasingly, patient

care is exploiting the new tools and information that systems can provide, while maintaining a patient-

centric approach to their use. Software that supports the core medical processes, hardware that allows

easy access to information at the point of care, and standards that make the integration of different

systems easier than ever before are all key features of the new healthcare IT systems.

1.2.2 IT instruments in medical sector .

The driving force behind the revolution in healthcare IT is the desire for providers to offer the best

possible standard of care to each patient. This has driven the emergence, and growing sophistication of

the Electronic Medical Record, (EMR). This digital record can hold the full details of an individual's

medical history, which ultimately helps to direct diagnostic and therapeutic decisions when a patient

enters the healthcare system. There is another new technology is growing now. It is nuclear medical. It

is a powerful technology. This technology is used to identify the diseases. To identify the infected cells

in the cancer and other diseases. These instruments are using the γ- rays to get the image of infected

cells.

The growing of IT in medical is very important and essential. It is provide more efficient way to find

the patients disease. It is more reliable. So we can decrease the death of patients, without knowing the

diseases. Therefore these technologies are very helpful to make the people healthier.

1.3 The Insurance and Society impact in heath and Medical

In the society there are government sector and private sectors to help the poor people and rich people

for their medical expenses. For the poor people the government sector is very useful. There are

president funds for the poor people. Especially for major surgery such as Heart operation, Kidney

operation etc. For these expenses the presidents fund separate a part of money for these poor people.

There are government hospitals for the poor people for their minor surgery such as childbirth, diseases

etc. The people who wok in government estate they also get money form the estate for the impact of

death. Disparities in health care are often related to an individual's or a group's ability to pay for

healthcare. This means the costs of healthcare and the different approaches to health care that have

been taken by governments around the world. There are so many life insurance companies for the rich

and poor people. 2

1.3.1 Health Insurance

Health insurance is a type of insurance whereby the insurer pays the medical costs of the insured if the

insured becomes sick due to covered causes or accidents. The insurer may be a private organization or

a government agency. The people could lower health insurance prices by exercising, eating healthy

food, and avoiding addictive substances that are damaging to the body. Healthier lifestyles protect the

body from disease, and with fewer diseases, there would be fewer health care related expenses.

Another element of high health care costs is related to the private management of healthcare by large

corporations.

1.3.2 Private Insurance and Free-Market Health Care

Two types of health insurance have developed in modern society, private health insurance (or free-

market) models and publicly funded health insurance models. Private insurance refers to health

insurance provided by a non-governmental organization, usually a privately owned or publically traded

corporation. The remarkable advances in medical technology that have accompanied the private

insurance/free-market approach to health care.

1.3.3 Publicly Funded Health Care

An alternative to private health insurance and the free-market approach to health care is publicly

funded health care. Publicly funded medicine is health care that is paid wholly or mostly by public

funds (e.g. taxes). Publicly funded medicine is often referred to as socialized medicine by its

opponents, whereas supporters of this approach tend to use the terms universal healthcare, single payer

healthcare, or National Health Services. So these insurance sectors and health care centers are help

both the poor and rich people for their medical expenses. There are so many ways available for the

people to get life insurance policy. So they can pay a small amount for a month. Then in the case of

accident and other diseases these government and private sector help to spent money for their medical

expense.

3

Chapter 2

Positive Approach of IT on the Health Sector

2.1 Introduction

The technological improvement & development affected to the well being of the health sector in a

significant way. The new inventions on medically related sections made a huge development on the

unrevealed areas in the medical world with a new approach. The development of new related devices,

equipments made health sector rich & the systems are developed to make things easier, also the

education & awareness on health areas are vastly increased with the aid of the technology. The

knowledge on health becomes more common & available almost all the places in the world with the

development of communication method via the technological development. The significant areas

which made medical sector enrich with knowledge, power, equipments are discussed below.

2.2 Learning & Researching Advancement Through the Technology

Education is one of the crucial events for a developing country. The standard of the country is

depending on the educational advancements & achievements at most of the cases. Therefore learning

& researching activities involved a major consideration on development of a country. On behalf of

health, education regarding health factors is very important. The knowledge of a society on the medical

science decides the well-being of that society. More educated personnel on the field means more

consideration on behalf of health of the people. Therefore people started to seek for advancement in

health through education.

To achieve that advancement people found that information technology plays a major role. When the

technology develops the facilities provided to the educational field will be increased, thus many people

can involve in learning health related stuff. Earlier there were few places in a country to study,

Research on the medical factors as the resources were limited. People who were willing to learn also

not get the chance to do so as a result of this less development in technology. But with the development

of information technology, resources regarding health education are commonly available & most of

them are free of charge, thus people started learning things very quickly & willingly. This resulted to a

vast development in the society on behalf of health.

Not only that technology made people to start learning things, but also for people who were already

learning things like for students, researches made the world easier. Earlier there were less development

in medical side thus devices & methods of learning about the medical factors were difficult. To know

something the students had to do many hard works. For example, earlier there were no laboratories

equipped with many complex medical devices as today, so the experiments were done with limited

resources. Thus the outcome was not efficient. Earlier the possibility of learning on health factors

deeply was very less. But with the advancement in the technology, students have more opportunities to

4

discover the world with their own using the modern complex devices. Students can have an exact idea

on every area of learning with the use of these technologies. So the development of the health depends

on the development of technological development.

2.2.1 Invention of New Medicines & Drugs

Health includes physical health & mental health. To achieve both of these people need some kind of a

trigger from outside. That means sometimes people could not maintain their body in a balanced way so

that they may feel uncomfortable themselves. On those occasions, people tend have some kind of

assistance, help from something or someone. Drugs or medicine are those triggers that make people

feel comfortable on their day today life. Drugs play a major role in hospitals & almost all the places as

patients are very much rely on these drugs. Today drugs are helpful for not only human but for animals

also. There are special places for animals to be take care of by giving them necessary drugs. So for

living people need drugs & they seek drugs for each & every medical issue. Therefore invention of

new drugs is welcomed by the world population. For that the information technology has lot to do.

Earlier there were limited drugs for many deceases. That means some deceases were even not

identified & there were no cure to those deceases at all. Sometimes even there exists drugs for a

particular decease; it would take months to cure as the efficiency of those drugs is not that good. There

were no drugs for immediate treatments as lack of medical resources. This caused to sudden deaths.

There were no proper devices for surgeries like critical events & most of the time if a person is critical,

the hope for living was very little. The levels of availability of medicines were at that poor at early

stages.

Therefore with the development of technology people started developing new drugs for various

deceases. The availability of technology in a higher stage helped people to research on vast area & to

develop new medicines using the modern technology. People are able to mix tiny parts together using

complex & most accurate devices to make reliable & good quality drugs. Thus to increase the quality

of life, drugs are much important & invention of new drugs backed by the technology by giving

maximum output to the society.

2.2.2 Invention of New Medical Equipments

With the aid of modern technology, people think on areas which should be developed to have a

luxurious life. People identify those critical areas & think in terms of making it more developed.

Health is such area that many people think on that should be developed more & more. Therefore the

researches do many experiments & invent new devices & equipments using the modern technology.

The prevailing technology is highly & efficiently used to develop the medically valuable devices.

Many times ago, the technology is not at that good position thus the health of a society was kept at a

very law level. The information technology made people to produce things which make their lives

more reliable. 5

These devices replaced the old, unreliable systems & mechanisms by giving a maximum benefit to the

society. For an example earlier there were no machines to check the heart deceases & thus many

people died without identifying the subject. But now there are many types of equipment to check each

& every part of the body for its punctuality, with a reliable & trustworthy result. As the information

technology develops, the accuracy of the devices also increased benefiting the society. Therefore the

technological development makes the inventions arise & also give the light to new medical equipments

to make a healthy world.

2.2.3 Rise of the Expert Systems on the Health Sector

Modern world is very complicated & complex in every area with the development of the technology.

The complexity is not bad as it gives people many chances to do, achieve certain things. In this busy

world sometimes people could not go for certain places to do certain things because of the work load

they have to carry out. Sometimes even to take their own medicine they do not have time. Most

commonly, when we are to meet a specialist or a doctor, we have to wait for a certain period

sometimes in a queue for our turn. Sometimes that may be 1minute or 1hour or more. It depends on the

number of patients & the accuracy of the doctor. Sometimes the doctor may not present that day &

people have to come another day wasting their money & valuable time. Therefore people needed a way

to save their time & money together with getting medicines on time. Thus the expert systems are

developed as a solution for that.

Expert systems are developed using the modern information technology. With the aid of information

technology, developers gather certain important information regarding certain deceases & store in a

database. Then they design an expert system that can give possible solutions for the given deceases.

These expert systems are designed to ask some questions regarding the cause from the patient &

analyze the database & give the solutions just like a doctor. These expert systems help people to

diagnose certain deceases by themselves & to understand the amount of danger in that decease.

As these expert systems can be implemented on the internet anyone having computer literacy can use

the application. That is the biggest advantage in the expert systems from the today‟s perspective.

People do not want to stay hours in the queues for their turn instead they can go to internet & have the

assistance of an expert system. These expert systems help to increase the availability of the medical

care all most all over the world & thus increase the standard of health of the people in a society. Thus

the information technology has a great deal on developing those expert systems on behalf of the

goodwill of the people.

6

2.3 Social Awareness on Health Towards the Technology

Health is one of the crucial events on human development & therefore people need to know certain

basic things regarding health. At the early stages people were not that much aware on most of the

deceases & they knew very few common deceases only. That made themselves into trouble when they

are fallen from unknown decease, what should be done at the first hand. The basic skills & knowledge

ware not there with those people as the communication between doctors & patients were lack & also

the methods of communication were less. With the poor technology, people were unable to aware on

certain things like how to prevent from decease, what are the first aids on certain cause etc. as these

problems arisen people started to use technology to aware the society more on the health care.

With the information technology, many communication methods are available for people to get to

know on things. The television, radio, newspapers like traditional media also contributed to the social

awareness regarding the health. But the technology advancement made things much easier by having

the internet, emailing, fax etc. these media made information commonly available for any person in the

world at any time. When people aware on certain deceases & the actions to be taken, the level of health

of the society increases. The awareness made people to do certain pre-actions to avoid from certain

deceases & do the exact thing on a critical situation. All these are because of the availability of the

knowledge for the general public & it was done by the information technology.

2.4 Summary

The information technology helps to increase the development of the social health by providing

various facilities, knowledge regarding the subject. New inventions on medical equipments, drugs &

expert systems to help people & also aware society on the health, are major advancements achieved by

the medical field with the aid of information technology. Thus the information technology has a

positive approach on development of the health on a society.

7

Chapter 3

Health issues related with information technology.

3.1 Introduction

This chapter is to describe that what negative impacts of health by using information technology to

individuals and society are. How information technology deals with these health hazards and how to

prevent those damages are mainly discusses here.

3.2 IT enabled genetic engineering and health problems

Genetic engineering is very important subject area which is used to produce foods and living beings by

modifying genes. Genetic engineering uses transformation and molecular cloning to change genes

directly. This technology applies for medicine, agriculture like areas successfully. The main and initial

purpose of genetic engineering was that increases the productivity of crops and produces drugs to

attack various diseases. Jack Williamson added the word „Genetic Engineering‟ in 1951 by his

“Dragon‟s Island” novel. Then after finding the double-helix structure of the DNA (Deoxyribonucleic

acid), this subject area has been growing rapidly.

At present, Information technology plays major role in genetic engineering. There are many

bioinformatics software which are used to do analysis in genes. For an example, plasmids (vector) are

using genetic engineering to make many copies or express particular genes. To record the DNA

sequence of plasmids and predict cut sites of restriction enzymes, scientists use Geneious, Lasergene,

ApE like expert system based softwares. The story of IT and genetic engineering was begun by

Deubert and Sontums‟ Fortron program called “Protein Mastermind” in 1977. “Geneious” is one of the

sophisticated cross platform software which is commonly uses in genetic engineering by today. It uses

to analysis the DNA sequence or phylogenies and design clones.

But the problem is that this IT enabled genetic technology arises several health issues. By consuming

GM foods heavily may causes to food allergens and make a resistance to antibiotic. It reduces the

effectiveness of human‟s natural antibiotics, because of GM foods have antibiotic –resistance genes. As

well as GM foods make toxic substances and toxic fungi which are harmful to human beings. In 1990

scientists found out that people who have allergic to Brazil nuts have allergic GM soybeans. So many

countries banned the GM soybeans after this experiment. But the problem is that America like

developed countries do lot of investments on GM food cultivation and promotion, so they are not ready

to produce GM foods because of the commercial success of it. Another health issue in GM foods is that

they have a lesser nutritional level than natural foods. So this may cause to malnutrition like health

disease in future. If the scientists are going to create human clones in future, it may cause too many

negative impacts in psychologically also.

8

3.3 Mobile phone usage and health issues

Mobile phone is one of the main communication devices which is commonly used in modern world. It

helps to establish social interactions between each other without concerning the location. By 2009,

there are nearly 4.4 billion mobile phone users in the world. This fact shows that how this small

communication device becomes a powerful tool to human‟s day today activities. But the over-usage of

mobile phones and usage of poor quality phones makes so many mentally and physically health issues.

According to the latest experiment, scientists found out that there might be a connection between

increasing the patients with brain tumors and mobile phone usage. They emphasis that usage poor

quality phones which are heavily emit radiation waves causes to this brain tumors and at length

becomes a brain cancer. As well as using hand sets with a huge volume causes to damage the hearing

level. If that habit continues for a long time period, the hearing will be lost. So the governments of

many countries introduce laws to reduce the volume levels of hand sets. To reduce those health issues,

Apollo medical team said that always use the left ear for phones not right ear which has a direct link

with brain. Not only physical issues, but also mobile phones arise so many mentally health issues as

well. Excessive usage of mobile phones causes to stress, fatigue, restlessness and sleeping problems

for the people specially youth 14 to 20 years age. Because of this restlessness, careless life style people

may addict to drinking alcohol, smoking like bad habits too.

3.4 IT improves the manufacturing of alcohol (“Evil of health”).

There is no argument that consuming alcohol (Beer,Arrack,Vine etc.) causes to many health problems.

So, the interesting point is that how IT interacts with manufacturing and promoting alcohols. At

present, leading alcohol manufacturers use IT to increase the efficiency of their production. To perform

the calculations in distillery in reliable manner, they use “ABS (alcohol blending software) like

softwares. As well as these companies use software to perform their financial and advertising activities

also. There are so many softwares to learn how to brewing beer in home. They are “BeerSmith”,

“cyberbrau” etc. Using these softwares, the user can input receipts and do brewing step by step.

“Orchestrated Beer” is one of main business software which is used by small and medium scale

brewing companies.

Drinking alcohol arises many health issues in physically and mentally. Alcohol damages the liver of

human beings. Excessive usage of alcohol definitely causes to Cirrhosis like liver damages. As well as

usage of alcohol has affects to certain cancers (liver, breast) also. Heart diseases, hemorrhagic stroke,

digestive disturbance, high blood pressure, neurological disorders and sleep disruptions are several

health issues which are caused by the usage of alcohol. So growing alcohol manufacturing with

information technology is done a huge damage to humans‟ health. So these brewing softwares and

expert systems have a responsibility to increase above mentioned health issues in the society.

9

3.5 Playing computer games and health hazards

Playing computer games is the most popular cyber activity among kids and teenagers. Creators of these

computer games also focus the group aged below 25 and introduce many games with more

attractiveness. Most of the kids and teenagers addict to these games and spend more time to play these

games. Because of this addiction, several health issues are arisen.

Pressing specific keys and clicking the mouse repeatedly causes to overuse damages on hands. This

happens especially while playing car and action games like things. In this kind of games, user has to

control the player by using few keys (shooting, regulate directions) only. In computer games, the user

may have to gaze at a specific point for a long time period. This may cause to eyestrain also. There are

several actions which can be taken by parents to reduce those problems. Allow to play games in a

certain time period, advice to take regular relax while playing; change the controllers (key board,

mouse or joystick) regularly.

The mentally damage of computer games addiction is more destructive than physically damage.

According to researches, there is possibility to become criminals who addict to crime related games in

childhood. The fear to kill a person and use weapons is removing from the kids‟ minds in childhood.

These kinds think like that killing a person is an ordinary scene. So this is become a great social and

cultural issue in future.

In recently, there was news that a kid was dead without taking foods while playing computer games.

This kid plays a certain game for days without moving or performing other activities. So this is the best

example which proves that computer games addiction causes to severe health diseases. Stress,

restlessness and certain phobias may be occurred by this game addiction too.

3.6 Pornography and health issues

Usage of IT and IT related Internet is one of main responsible party for spreading pornographically

materials all over the world without limit of age. So using IT, it is very easy to access pornographically

materials and use these materials are caused to many health and social problems. This helps to addict

teenagers to pornographycal stuffs, because of that there is trend to do sexual activities by them. So

these unaware sexual activities lead to many health problems. AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency

Syndrome), Gonorrhea, Candidacies, Syphilis, viral hepatitis and ovarian cancers etc. In addition to

these physical hazards, there are so many mental problem occurred by over-use of pornographycal

stuffs. Mental disorders like stress, disrupted sleeping, breaking social relations are the psychological

damages of this pornography addiction.

10

3.7 General diseases occurred in usage of computers

3.7.1 Repetitive strain injury

Repetitive strain injury (RSI) is commonly known disease among common users. This happens mainly

by doing the same action repeatedly. Having poor posture, having poor techniques, use computers

more than four hours, don‟t take regular breaks, disrupted sleeping are several other factors which are

caused to RSI. The symptoms of this disease are that pain in fingers, palms, wrists, forearms, back and

shoulders, lack of endurance, pain worse with the activity. To prevent this health risks, there are several

actions which can be taken by computer users. They are, use ergonomically optimized computer

equipments (chair, table, keyboard, mouse, and monitor), do strengthening, stretching and aerobic

exercises and use voice activated softwares (NetSpeak) etc.

Figure 3.7.1.1 Proper ergonomic design for computer users.

3.7.2 Computer vision syndrome (CVS)

Computer vision syndrome (decreasing the blinking reflex) is one of the heavily affected hazards

among the computer users. This happens by looking at the computer screen for a long time period

without interrupt. Headache, blurred vision, eye strain and fatigue are main symptoms of this

syndrome. Using glare guards, having good lighting conditions and taking a eye rest in 20-20-20 rule

(look at a point 20 feet away and focus on it for 20 seconds in every 20 minute).

3.8 Summary

Identifying these health problems related with IT, and minimize the affects of them as much as possible

is needed to improve the quality of life in physically and psychologically.

11