Information and Communication Technology ICT in Health nd Social Care Practice
"Information and communication technology (ICT)" can aid the health and social care organisations in improvising the quality of their care services. in addition, () mentioned that ICT has promoted patient centred care facilities in health and social care settings. This improvisation is carried out at lowered cost. Although, Abeysekera(2018) added that ICT possess benefits as well as drawbacks in health and social care service provision.
Benefits
Implementation of ICT within health and social care units has helped in enhancement the quality of service delivery. As opined by Threapletonet al. (2017), ICT has enable both qualitative and quantitative assessment of care users with its several features. In addition, ICT has helped in benefitting the medical professionals to acquire positive health outcomes within short time period by undertaking treatment procedures with least medical errors. It can also be said that ICT has helped the healthcare units to modify their health models for delivering care services (). Apart from this, ICT has also reduced the overall expenditure of healthcare setting by reducing ample paperwork and developing invoices for the care users. In this way, application of ICT has helped the healthcare units to a great extent.
Challenges
The challenges of ICT implementation in health and social care organisations might include management problems, poor infrastructure, poor workforce, lack of ICT awareness, shortage of resources and lack of computer access. Additionally, Devet al. (2017) also cited in one of the research works that application of ICT within healthcare organisations might result in data security challenges. For instance, the computer within the healthcare organisation might get infected due to virus attack the cloud storage might be vulnerable. In this regard, it can be stated that the management of the healthcare organisations are required to identify the probable challenges of implementing ICT and take appropriate measures to overcome the same.
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Discussion of the way ICT has benefitted service users in health and social care
Enhanced expectations
With the availability of ICT within the healthcare organisations, the expectation level of the care users increases from their medical practitioner. This is because the care users are able to acquire knowledge regarding the elevating technical infrastructure of the healthcare industry with the support of ICT (Norouziniaet al., 2016). Therefore, the care users feel that they would be able to attain the best treatments for their health problems. It might also happen that the care users compare the quality of treatment provision of different healthcare organisations. Thus, it can be stated that ICT has enabled the care users to acquire quality care facilities.
Access to knowledge
Implementation of ICT has also helped the care users to acquire specific platforms for acquiring appointment in respective healthcare organisations. In this regard, it can be stated that they need not physically visit the healthcare units to acquire appointments (Spitaelset al., 2017). This can be considered as one of the benefits for the care users which save their expense of travelling to care unit for attaining an appointment.
Discuss how ICT has benefitted health and social care practitioners
Wide range of benefits is obtained by the medical professionals with effective implementation of ICT. Some of them are as follows,
Overload of communication
The medical practitioners of health and social care organisations are adequately able to acquire increased rate of information regarding treatment facilities for the health and well-being of their care users (Raiet al., 2016). In this perspective, it can be stated that the medical practitioners might make use of these information to enhance their skills and knowledge in the field.
Effectual availability and accessibility of technical and scientific support needs
During emergency situation, it is important for the medical professionals to acquire technical support, otherwise that might result in increased frustration. This is due to the fact of their inadequacy that they have not been able to provide immediate response treatment to their care users (OrigliaIkhiloret al., 2019). In this regard, it can be stated that ICT has helped to enhance the availability of technical devices which can be used to enhance the treatment quality and efficiency.
Modifications in professional frontiers
With enhanced availability of ICT systems, it becomes easy for the medical professionals to diagnose, treat and review their care users effectively. Moreover, the technically skilled medical professionals acquire the most scope to tackle serious medical cases, thereby escalating their knowledge, skills and experiences further.
Explain the data protection act and its application in health and social care
Data protection act ensures to protect the privacy of the personal information of every individual held by different organisations. It also ensures that the individuals might correct their personal records if required. In case of health and social care organisations, the management needs to ensure that information of their respective people or the care users are preserved and protected. In UK, every organisation is required to abide by Data Protection Act 2018 (Legislation.gov.uk, 2020). Chapter 12 of this act ensures that the organisations cannot utilise any individual's information without their permission or any emergency situation (Legislation.gov.uk, 2020). Concerning to health and social care, the management follows the legislation and make sure that information of every care user is respected and the confidentiality is maintained to retain the trust. Moreover, during application of ICT in healthcare, the management is required to ensure that none of the data is lost or misused by any of data security issues (Theyset al., 2020). For this, strict measures can be taken by the management of the healthcare units. Henceforth, it can be sum up that compliance with data protection act help the health and social care to maintain effectual relationship with its care users.