Health Technology

Health Technology

HEALTH:-

  • Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

TECHNOLOGY:-

  • The branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment, drawing upon such subjects as industrial arts, engineering, applied science, and pure science.

HEALTH TECHNOLOGY:- 

  • It is the prevention and rehabilitation, vaccines, pharmaceuticals and devices, medical and surgical procedures, and the systems within which health is protected and maintained.

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  • Health technologies are used at every level of the health care system from the simplest to the most advanced.
  • They form the backbone of the services medicine can offer in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness and disease.

PURPOSE:-

  • Develop and maintain basic operational frameworks for safe and reliable health services and technologies.
  • Help Member States complete the basic operational frameworks through project proposals prepared by Member States.

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  • Develop norms and standards, guidelines, training materials, reference materials and estimation of burden of disease. Focus on diseases of the poor.

AREAS OF HEALTH TECHNOLOGY:-

ESSENTIALITY:-

HEALTH TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT (HTA):-

  • Health technology assessment is the systematic evaluation of properties, effects or other impacts of health technology.

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  • The main purpose of HTA is to inform policy making for technology in health care, where policy making is used in the broad sense to include decisions made at, e.g., the individual or patient level, the level of the health care provider or institution, or at the regional, national and international levels.

BASIC HTA ORIENTATIONS:-

  • Technology-oriented assessments:-
    • These are intended to determine the characteristics or impacts of particular technologies.
  • For example:-
    • A government agency may want to determine the clinical, economic, social, professional, or industrial impacts of population based cancer screening, cochlear implants, or other particular interventions.

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  • Problem-oriented assessments:-
    • It focuses on solutions or strategies for managing a particular problem for which alternative or complementary technologies might be used.
  • For example:-
    • Clinicians and providers concerned with the problem of diagnosis of dementia may call for the development of clinical practice guidelines involving some combination or sequence of clinical history, neurological examination, and diagnostic imaging using various modalities.

  • Project-oriented assessments:-
    • It focus on a local placement or use of a technology in a particular institution, program, or other designated project.
  • For example:-
    • This may arise when a hospital must decide whether or not to purchase a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) unit, considering the facilities, personnel, and other resources needed to install and operate an MRI unit; the hospital's financial status; local market potential for MRI services; competitive factors; etc.

STEPS OF HTA:- 

  • Identify assessment topics 
  • Specify the assessment problem 
  • Determine locus of assessment 
  • Retrieve evidence 
  • Collect new primary data (as appropriate) 
  • Appraise/interpr et evidence 
  • Integrate/syn thesize evidence

PURPOSES OF HTA:-

  • Regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about whether to permit the commercial use (e.g. marketing) of a drug, device or other technology
  • Health care payers, providers, and employers about whether technologies should be included in health benefits plans or disease management programs, addressing coverage (whether or not to pay) and reimbursement (how much to pay)

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  • Clinicians and patients about the appropriate use of health care interventions for a particular patient’s clinical needs and circumstances
  • Health professional associations about the role of a technology in clinical protocols or practice guidelines
  • Hospitals, health care networks, group purchasing organizations, and other health care organizations about decisions regarding technology acquisition and management
  • Standards-setting organizations for health technology and health care delivery regarding the manufacture, use, quality of care, and other aspects of health care technologies
  • Government health department officials about undertaking public health programs (e.g., vaccination, screening, and environmental protection programs.

HEALTH TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT PROGRAM (HTAP):-

  • HTA is an innovative program that determines if health services used by state government are safe and effective.

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  • The primary goals are to make:-
    • Health care safer by relying on scientific evidence and a committee of practicing clinicians
    • Coverage decisions of state agencies more consistent

EXPERTISE FOR CONDUCTING HTA:-

  • Depending upon the topic and scope of assessment, these may include a selection of the following:
  • Physicians, nurses, dentists, and other clinicians
  • Managers of hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, and other health care institutions

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  • Radiology technicians, laboratory technicians and other allied health professionals
  • Biomedical and clinical engineers
  • PharmacologistsPatients and patient affairs representatives
  • Epidemiologists
  • Biostatisticians
  • Economists
  • Lawyers
  • Social scientists
  • Ethicists
  • Decision scientists
  • Computer scientists/programme rs
  • Librarians/information specialists

HEALTH TECHNOLOGIES AND DECISION MAKING:-

  • Health technology has the tremendous potential to change our understanding of disease, transform the delivery of healthcare services, and improve health outcomes. But using such technology comes at a price.

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  • Decisions about whether to purchase and use new technology should be based on high-quality evidence on its impact on health care and health outcomes.
  • Health Technologies and Decision Making analyses the barriers to, and facilitators of, evidence-based decision making in health-care systems.
  • Analysis focused on the production of evidence, primarily in the form of health technology assessment (HTA), and the way that such evidence is subsequently used in decision making.

RESEARCH ARTICLE:-

  • A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY ON , “Strategy of health information seeking among physicians, medical residents and students after introducing digital library and information technology in teaching hospitals of Iran,” AMONG, 315 physicians, assistants and medical students in affiliated hospitals of Semnan University of medical sciences in 2013.

RESULT:-

  • 52.9% of physicians and 79.5% of medical residents and students always used patient data.
  • 81.3% of physicians and 67.1% of medical residents and students reported using their own experiences.
  • 26.5% of physicians and 16.9% of medical residents and students always used databases such as PubMed and MEDLINE for patient care.

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