Exclusive Article By Lindsey Patterson
When you have to make a trip to the doctor’s office, you know that as long as the doctors and the nurses know what they’re doing and what they’ll looking for, you’ll be taken care of. But, just as important as the doctors and nurses, is the technology that they use. As technology in hospitals advances is give doctors a clearer path to helping patients heal faster, understanding where the pain comes from in the body and why it happens, and how to better treat ailments that were previously thought to be untreatable. Technology is vital to healthcare for more reasons that you might have originally thought.
The Importance of IT in Healthcare
When you hear the term Health IT it refers to a broad variety of things. It covers technology that is used to record, analyze and share a patient’s healthcare information and data. As Health IT improves, it allows the data to be processed faster which lets the patient know what is happening sooner. If you’ve ever sat in a hospital, you know how it feels to sit and wait for the results. The wait can take over an hour. If you’re waiting on a blood sample or something that has a longer processing time, you can end up having to wait up to a week for the information. As Health IT improves, the wait will hopefully be much less, and you’ll know what’s going on as immediately. It will also improve doctor records that will allow your healthcare history to be more secure and easier for you to access.
The CT Scan and MRI
CT scan stands for computed tomography. It sends X-rays through the body and can picture several layers of density and tissues. This allows doctors to have a detailed showing of everything that is on the inside. With a CT scan, you can see issues of the brain, the heart and lungs, reproductive systems, and the list can go on and on. Improvements in CT scans results in faster processing times and less radiation. Whenever you’re put into a CT scan, your body is hit with X-rays. Over time, x-rays can be extremely harmful to your body. Advances in CT technology, however, will reduce the amount of damage that is done to your body.
MRI stands for something completely different. It is a magnetic resonance imagining. It uses powerful magnetic fields and radio frequency pulses to produce detailed pictures of organs, soft tissues, bone, and other internal body structures. Tissues appear clearer on an MRI than a CT scan. Because of that, you can see the difference between normal tissue and abnormal tissue on an MRI that you might not be able to spot on a CT scan. There is no radiation in an MRI so you wouldn’t have to worry about getting hit with any x-rays beams. Improvements with the MRI would make the time pass quicker. MRIs often take up to twice as long as a CT scan and are a ton noiser. People are more likely to get claustrophobic in an MRI machine because of the loud thumping sound. To make patients more comfortable, technicians are working on make the MRI quicker and quieter. More improvements also means that the machines will eventually become more affordable. Possibly even enough to equal the cost of an inground pool. The important thing is that they become more accessible to patients from all backgrounds.
X-Ray Machines
Similar to a CT scan, x-rays are used widely throughout hospitals. A CT scan could be compared to a large x-ray machine. Smaller machines are used to identify fractures in bones or to see irregularities that cause pain in patients. If you’ve ever gone in for an x-ray, then you’re well aware of the plate of lead that they lay over the rest of your body. That’s because of the amount of radiation that is emitted from the x-ray machine. It can be extremely damaging for the body to get that radiation directly on a vital organ. X-rays are needed to identify bones issues without invasive surgery, so improvements are being made to reduce the amount of radiation emitted and to make the x-rays less harmful.
Improvements in healthcare technology will improve the lives of patients worldwide. People will be able to have more affordable health care and the service and quality of it will continue to improve. Researchers look for ways every minute of every day to find ways to improve upon what we have.
