MENA ICT: Empowerment of Health sector through Technology

Amman, Jordan – The healthcare sector, which is a vital sector to guarantee the right to health care, which is among the most important human rights, faces numerous challenges in the modern day. Rising costs, ageing population, climate change and a rise in the demand for quality care are some of the reasons why continued deployment of traditional methods is not a sustainable option.

Technology would empower and personalize health care; this will deliver health care tailored to patient needs with the best responses and highest safety margins to ensure better patient care.  Technology will also support us in making healthier choices, monitoring our health, optimizing exercise, sleep and nutrition patterns.

The integrationof information and communication technologies to this vital sector is a key enabler in the pursuit of safe and sustainable patient-centered healthcare for all. Doctors will be connected everywhere, patients can be monitored anywhere and everything would be stored on a huge database. Doctors could book appointments easily for patients through software applications used for online booking.

Telemedicine which is the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communication to improve the patient’s health status, is one of the key technological trends. In addition, healthcare sector could benefit greatly from using robotic surgeries, which is a method to perform surgery using a small tool attached to the robotic arm. The surgeon controls the robotic arm with a computer.

Another revolutionary technological trend that can be applied in health sector is the use of augmented in reality. The usage of augmented reality can serve the healthcare sector in education and training; in addition determine the right choices for patients by improving sight to decide whether a child would need an MRI or not.

New technological trends can serve the health care sector enormously if electronic health records are applied. They could provide comprehensive data about the patient history. They are designed to include information from all providers involved in a patients’ care.

Like always, new challenges underlie the introduction of new methods and technologies. Risks to the use of technology in medicine must be identified and managed to ensure the success of these approaches.