10/29/2024
Health tech is undergoing a rapid evolution. These changes promise to revolutionize patient care, enhance diagnostic accuracy, and streamline healthcare operations. Despite these potential benefits, there is a mix of enthusiasm and skepticism about these advancements from clinical staff. Understanding and addressing these concerns is crucial for successfully integrating new technologies into health systems.
Current State of Health Tech
Resistance to new healthcare technology is not uncommon and is often rooted in concerns about privacy, complexity, cost, and job displacement. National Nurses United released the results of a survey of over 2,300 registered nurses and found that 60% didn’t trust their employers to implement artificial intelligence (AI) with a focus on patient safety. Furthermore—out of the 2,300 nurses—69% said their assessment doesn’t align with AI, as it doesn’t take into account the “educational, psycho-social, or emotional needs“ of patients.
Privacy concerns tied to AI also persist, with data breaches becoming a frequent issue. The available data publicly shared by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) only accounts for breaches that affect more than 500 patients, even though smaller-scale security breaches certainly do occur. Still, according to the HHS, over a million patient records in the United States were breached in August 2024 alone. The security risk isn’t going away. Healthcare’s ever-increasing reliance on technology and the critical need for thousands of clinical staff to access immense volumes of protected health information (PHI) daily will continue to drive these trends and make patient information more vulnerable.
Benefits of Technology Advancements
Despite the concerns, the benefits of healthcare technology are substantial. For instance:
- AI algorithms continuously monitoring patient vital signs provide nursing staff with alerts about anomalies, potentially preventing adverse events.
- Similarly, AI wearable utilization at home enables providers to monitor daily vital signs and determine appropriate interventions virtually, thereby avoiding a delay in care and promoting patient engagement.
- AI can offer real-time decision support to enhance patient assessment and treatment plans, thereby increasing both the accuracy and speed of care, particularly in critical care environments.
- The rise of remote patient monitoring (RPM) has shown promising results. According to a survey completed by the Cleveland Clinic, around 80% of Americans using health monitoring technology are experiencing significant physical and mental benefits.
- A more prominent advancement—telemedicine—continues to enhance the patient experience by increasing virtual engagement and access while leveraging convenience.
