TO DAY ’S
H E A LT H CA R E
IN THE ERA OF
T E C H N O LO GY
by John Kacperski, RCDD, OSP
“Today’s Healthcare” is, without a doubt, technology
driven. But not just driven by Electronic Medical
Records (EMR), although it is certainly a tool that
physicians, clinicians and hospital staff cannot
imagine without. With EMR, a patient can message
their doctor with a question or a doctor can message
a patient, regarding issues, prescription refills, status
reports, test results, and so on. The recipient of the
inquiry or status is alerted via email or text that there
is an incoming message from a patient, physician,
clinician, business office or billing, enabling concise
messaging and saving time in an arena where time is
most pertinent.
In the late 80’s and early 90’s, for an expectant
mother to be put on a home fetal monitor, meant
lugging around a large, rather cumbersome belt
with a bundle of wires connected to an acoustical
coupler. Then multiple times each day, the
4
expectant mother would sit, tethered to the home
phone line for up to 60 minutes while a modem at
the hospital downloaded and printed data onto
rolls of thermal paper, only to be reviewed many
hours later in an attempt to read the data resulting
from the monitoring of baby and mommy-to-be.
Today, remote monitoring has evolved and can be
performed via an application which resides as on
EMR platform. Raw data has been replaced with high
contrast images and charts that immediately reside
in both mom and baby’s medical records and can be
accessed by authorized users whenever, wherever.
A doctor can enter a patient’s room with their tablet
and with a swipe of the hand share their screen with
the patient’s bedside monitor. The advancements in
healthcare technology are even more prevalent on
the patient side. It wasn’t so long ago that if your
cell phone rang in a hospital, security practically