Embrace Technology - keep it close to your heart

Today we are excited to share a guest blog post for our “Tips + Tricks to Chemotherapy” from our wonderful board member, Sravan. Not only does Sravan know technology like the back of his hand, but he also understands the importance of technological advances in the medical world from his own experiences of medical trauma. In this post you will find helpful information about this technology but will learn how to embrace this ever changing technological world. 

Technology means progression in life, in many ways you can say fear oftechnology is a kind of phobic condition in which the individual is generallyafraid of progression or advancement in life.

The main cause of fear of technology is lack of knowledge. You are afraid onlybecause you are unaware and uninformed.

Take for example the smartphone. Most of us today have them. And knowingly or unknowingly we have already taken the first step in removing fear of technology

Technology is improving every day, new developments are constantly infiltrating our lives. This holds true with health care as well. Technology helps in information gathering, research, treatments, and communications and have given medical providers new tools to work with and fresh new ways to practice medicine.

The internet has become one of the most important medical research tool and a source for medical information. Quality of life, health and medicine is getting better every day because of technology. 

There are few things that we take for granted now than we ever did even 3-4 years ago.

1. Apps – Track your medications, alarms that remind you of time to take meds. There are now close to 100,000 mobile health apps in 62 app stores, with the top 10 apps generating over 4 million free downloads every day.
2. Vault – Medical Vault, Stores your health information, procedures. This  provides HIPAA-compliant storage for all the protected health information (PHI)
3. Fitbit / Fuelband – Health Fitness increased adoption of wearable tech, such as the— a market that has grown to 100 million units as of 2014.
4. ID bracelets - stores your emergency contacts, medical, allergy, and insurance information in a secure, online profile that is immediately accessed

To stress further on the importance of technology here is an account of say a heart patient.

Heart patients require special medical care and immediate attention. In some emergencies, the heart patient may not always be able to speak or communicate. The person may even be unresponsive. Furthermore, an emergency may occur when a relative or a friend who has knowledge about the heart patient’s condition may not be around. In these cases, a heart patient bracelet can silently inform the attending medical personnel of the disease, if they have a pacemaker or cardiac implant, and even where the person keeps their medication (like nitroglycerin) if necessary.

Having these devices has enabled doctors to use e-mail, texts, videos, and conference facilities to consult colleagues from all over the world and has helped the patient and providers many trial and errors and has simplified the need to guess a patient’s condition.

Eliminate the unknown. Gain as much knowledge as possible about the Doctor, their office and the general procedures. Most fears come from the unknown, so arming oneself with information is a great antidote.

Now that we have realized medicine and technology go hand in hand how exactly do we embrace this never ending change? 

Check back next Monday for Sravan’s follow up post!