Patient Monitoring

You never know when the patient may be in danger from certain diseases, or symptoms. The faster the doctor can contact the patients in emergencies, the higher the possibility of surviving. Patient Monitoring comes in handy in these kind of situations. There are various tools available for monitoring patients today. The most common method will be the usage of a patient monitor. A patient monitor is an electronic machine designed to monitor for an example changes in heart rate, blood pressure, etc. These information are stored, thus can be transmitted to other machines by the usage of a wireless connection. If the heart rate of the patient goes under the normal heart beat, an alarm may set off in the doctor's office, indicating an emergency. As i mentioned before, the earlier the patients are treated, the lower the risk. This is a video link about a monitoring system used in Pakistan. Video

Advantages:

• Patients can be monitored autonomously


• Increased possibility of surviving emergencies

Disadvantages:

• Cost, like all the others, machines that deal with health are often expensive


• Doctors need extra training to use these devices


• In some cases, patients will need training to use devices as well

Issues:

equality of access due to the cost. The developed health care may not be distributed to all patients.

Reliability- The devices must be reliable. If there is a bug, not only it puts the patients in risk, but it could also waste the doctor's time.

Cost- The devices are often expensive

People and machines- Doctors, and sometimes patients need training to use the devices

Privacy- Private data is being transfered, and therefore must be secured. Ties in with the security issue.

Source