Medical Technology; Helping with Longevity and Insurance Premium Many people may know that what medical technology is, but did they ever think about why it is important for us? Medical technology is any tool used to solve medical problems ranging from a simple Band-Aid to a cardiac defibrillator. Some of these tools are massive machines which are used to diagnose the disease or help to cure the illness in human body before it converts into a life threatening situation. An example to this is the ultrasound machine, which scan the body to locate a tumor or cancer.
Medical technology provides many options for doctors while expanding the choice of treating with curing the human body. It helps physicians to extend a person’s life regardless of quality of their life and help to treat more people with positive curable results. These vast advancements of technology in medical technology allow many individuals to live longer, healthier, and more of a productive lifestyle. Medical technology is one of the most important aspects in individual lives from newborn baby to the elderly why?
Because it can affect a patient’s health in various ways, the most significant impact is with the use of treatments and procedures. Due to the improved modern technology and medical treatments, these procedures modifies the advance methods of diagnosing many people medical issues. Medical technology has affected scientific treatments by providing better physician care to those who utilizes newer technology. Medical technology “improves mortality by shorten the hospital stays for both physicians and patients by providing advance machines.
It increases the patient’s life expectancy by reducing the disease risk factor, long-term complications of related chronic disease and needs for drugs” acknowledge by (Esmail). In other words, medical technology provides more accuracy, speed and efficiency in diagnosing health problems such as burns, heart attack, heart transplant, liver, or lung cancer in operations to surgeons. As medical technology advances into medical treatments, it is also affecting different type of medical procedures like surgeries.
With the help of technology, hospitals are filled with both the advance and less invasive procedures. “Advance invasive procedures are also known as invasive procedures. This procedure operates skin or mucous membrane and connective tissues in natural body orfice. On the other hand, less invasive procedures which also known as non-invasive is defined as creating no break in the skin and having no connection between mucus, skin break and internal body cavity” noted by (Esmail). These procedures help doctors to diagnose the disease which was facilitated earlier with a more localized treatment.
Thanks to new technology, doctors can utilize the use of the advance, localized and sophisticated scanners to diagnose the disease before subjecting the patients to any surgeries, diagnoses or needless interventions. Specifically in surgical category, medical technology has improved the operating process with the help of preliminary advancements. Allan has confirmed that technical improvement and advancements in medical technology has brought a transformation with the help of the robot control and assistance in surgeries.
Many Surgeries for any kind of injuries or alignments has become faster, more accurate, and less invasive due to the robotic assistance and control in operating room mentioned by (Allan). Thanks to the help of robots in accelerating procedures, operations has become faster and safer moreover, it saves time and improves several people lives. Conventional surgery or Complex however both are the operating process in which doctors remain standing for twelve to sixteen hours which leads them to exhaustion and accidently committing minor mistakes.
Sometimes minor mistakes can change into major by causing harmful errors particularly in complicate and delicate surgeries like neurosurgeries and bone surgery. Now robot use in surgical process, lead the surgeries into faster moving pace in both time and procedures plus it count safer than conventional surgery. With the advancements of medical technology, machines are playing a major role in surgeries to diagnose human body while advancing surgical techniques with the use of robotic hands.
Surgeries like neurosurgery and cardiac which requires standing and operating for long period of time, may cause errors or unintentional mistakes during surgeries by surgeons due to fatigue. Surgeons are also human and without the proper rest they are more likely to make mistakes which can cause paralyze or death of a patient. But the use of robots in surgery is able to reduce these risks because robots hands never get tired and it won’t waivers out of position while being a great help in surgeries. “The role of medical robots isn’t completely autonomous and they won’t perform the surgery by themselves.
Instead they are to assist the surgeon who commands and control them” explain by (Allan). In the contrary, medical robots are assisting surgeons in urology, neurology, and gynecology, cardiac, orthopedic, pediatric and radio-surgical procedures by reducing disease risk factors. As a result, surgery is moving faster in the process of making a relationship between man and machine. Due to the advance surgical techniques, engineers are able to develop new innovations which can help doctors to save more people.
Machines like “Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Positive Emission Tomography (PET) scanners allow for greater accuracy, speed, and efficiency in diagnosing medical problems” noted by (Esmail). These machines provide an accurate health report to diagnose diseases which can be facilitated earlier with more localized treatments. With the help of these machines, doctors are able to use more sophisticated scanners to observe and learn more about the body’s function, current condition and location of most diseases without having the patient to receive surgery for either the diagnose or needless long-term intervention.
For example PET scanners that can detect lung cancer that has spread and thus avoid a futile operation mentioned by (Esmail). With the help of these new innovations, doctors and engineers have improved the hospitals as well as society. These innovations improve our society in multiple ways for example; by improving surgical technology, doctors are able to reduce trauma and hospital stays of patients. It is use to reduce the heart patient mortality for instance “Dr. M. C Myriam report shows the decline in mortality rate due to coronary heart disease between 1980 and 1990.
The author estimated that 25 percent of the decline could be explained by primary improvements in the treatment of patients with coronary heart disease” explain by (Esmail). With the use of these machines in hospital help doctors to save countless life’s and diagnoses more people accurately. Medical technology has become essential in society by saving money. By improving physician care, availability of medical technology appears to play a significant role in improving the efficiency of healthcare provided by doctors to reduce mortality across country noted by (Esmail).
Medical technology improves physician care by controlling income and the number of physicians. Those countries with higher long term availability of MBI and CT scanners can produce better health outcomes in term of life expectancy and potential year of life lost to heart disease noted of (Esmail). This study shows that there is an important relationship between the supplies of technology and money which is spent on medical technology with the impact to physician care of patient. As medical technology saves money in our society due to new innovations, it is also helping doctors to perform operations precisely and accurately during surgeries.
Today’s technologies requires doctors to know both the inside environment of human body while receiving help through technology. The use of ultrasound machines and robotic arms has made this operating process even more prevalent in surgeries. Weidenfeld explained the use of technology in surgery by explaining the procedure of both open and laparoscopic surgeries. Both procedures involves camera through an incision in human body to know the inside environment of body before surgery (Weidenfeld).
In further article, he also explained the single-port surgery which involves only one cut to reduce the scarring and swelling in body but robotic method requires none. This robotic method gives surgeons a greater range of motion and increases visibility during operations. It decreases blood loss during surgery as well (Weidenfeld). Basically, robotics use in surgeries have made operating process quicker by providing visibility during surgery and comfort for doctors during operating process to perform operation precisely.
This method shortens the hospital stays for doctors and allows them to have some time with their families. Every situation has two aspects with one being negative and the other being positive. However medical technology also contains a negative aspect in our society. Medical technology is affecting the health care cost by inventing new innovations. Health insurance system that provides payment for new innovations, encourages medical advancements which make medical treatments more expensive noted by (Henry).
Because health insurance provides money to both research department and medical supplies from their customers, this encourages researchers to spend most of their time in searching or finding a cure for incurable diseases. This then causes health insurance companies to increase the insurance premium cost and yearly deductable for many people. The cost of new innovations in medical by Silicon Valley start-up incubator Rock Health report of last year that venture capital funding for digital health grew from $968 million to $1.
4 billion, even as funding for traditional medical devices, biotech rate dropped, but this rate of medical is still constant (McMahon). Medical technology can also become harmful to the American public due to the rising cost to our economy and our society. Although because of massive advancement of technology in our society, these machines also use in hospitals by improving surgical and operating techniques to diagnose human body. As well as, to cure disease and infections before they can transform into a terminal disease issue.
These advancements causes people to live longer and healthier lives moreover; it helps doctors to diagnose the illness before it convert into life threatening situation. Machines in today’s hospitals help physicians and patients in many ways by improving both of their lifestyles. Technology not only changed our society it has also impacted our health and thoughts by filling us with new ideas of making positive changes in our lives. It allows us to live longer and healthier lives regardless of quality of our lives and most important it permit us to enjoy every minute of our longer, healthier, and blissful and productive lives.?
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Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from “The Benefits of Medical Technologies. ” Medical Technology in Canada. Vol. 5. 2008. Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 24 Oct. 2013. Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. “New Technology Is Driving Up the Cost of Health Care. ” Medical Technology. Ed. Carol Ullmann and Lynn M. Zott. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2013. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from “How Changes in Medical Technology Affect Health Care Costs—Snapshot. ” 2007. Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 31 Oct. 2013. McMahon, Tamsin.
“The smartphone will see you now: putting medical technology in the hands of patients could revolutionize medicine. ” Maclean’s 11 Mar. 2013: 46+. Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 24 Oct. 2013. Weidenfeld, Lisa, and Joseph Uchill. “Robotic Surgery Offers Patients No Benefits over Traditional Surgery. ” Medical Technology. Ed. Carol Ullmann and Lynn M. Zott. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2013. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from “Robotic Surgery Popular, Expensive, but Is It More Effective? ” Medill Reports (6 Mar. 2012). Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.