Qualtiy Management Wild Card Blog #4

The Use of Innovative and Emerging
Technologies to Help Meet the Healthcare
and Quality of Life Needs of an Aging
Population

Primary Author
Jim Albert, Masonicare

I found this article to be very interesting. This article brings to mention the “baby boomers” and how they will put a strain on our healthcare system. This we all much know for certain will happen. In fact we here several ideas that might come to pass, for example, raising the age to 67 or maybe raising taxes on the working population. The question asked is how can we provide the best for our aging adult population? How can we give them the “golden” years? This article mentions one way they deem will help with this problem and that is, “to includes an increased reliance and use of emerging technology tools to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the healthcare industry, enable faster communication, build new caregiver support networks and assist seniors with their activities of daily living”.

The article mentions seeing a day not to far in the future where low cost, non-evasive technologies will help with seniors live a better and longer quality of life at home. They hope that with this new technology, less utilization of professional healthcare services will be needed. One example they provided is the use of “invisible” sensors around a senior citizens home so they can provide professional caregivers important information on how they are going about their daily activities like sleeping, eating and taking meds. As technology improves they are hoping that it will dramatically change the paradigms of patient care.

Also in addition to this they bring up “telehealth systems”. These systems will hopefully be able to take important daily vital signs at home or away from home. The information would be able to be downloaded over the telephone through cable to a secure web site relaying the information to the physician office. This would make managing chronic conditions like Diabetes much easier, and hopefully will be able to notice if anything is wrong before something major would happen. In addition, it mentions adding video technology so the patient would be able to talk face-to-face directly to their physician or family if the need be.

The article also goes on to mention that more so in the future technologies will be located in their cars, called “smart” cars that will help them drive more saftely, or “smart” wheelchairs that will be able to climb stairs, or even “smart” walkers enabling seniors to get to the grocery store or friends home and back.

I feel that this new technology will defiantly help our seniors to live a more productive independent lifestyle. Hopfully, it will save money in the long run, however my question is how are they going to be able to afford all the new technology. Cost will still come into play. Maybe in the long run it will save our system, then again maybe not