Telehealth
With telehealth, the main risks are patient care and data safety. The reasons are due to information of the patients potentially being heard by others around, decreasing the security of their medical data. Also, patient safety is at risk when telehealth communication is done poorly and ineffectively, causing crucial assessment data to be missed, resulting in improper treatment or follow up care. However, a benefit is that telehealth allows for greater access to care across a greater population of people. A school nurse cannot be everywhere at once, but the nurse can answer phone calls and speak to many in a short amount of time, and in essence, caring for more people than seeing each physically. With wearable medical technology, a risk is also data safety simply because more platforms are accessing the same information, meaning greater chances of having information leaked to other people who do not need this information or should not have access to the data. A benefit, however, is also patient care simply because the patient is constantly being monitored closely for any immediate changes to their medical data. Therefore, immediate attention will be given accordingly, and time will not be lost because as soon as a sudden change in status is noted, appropriate action will be taken to treat the patient. Wearable technology can often be connected to the EMRs and therefore, this increased communication can allow for a larger network of providers to gain access to patient data; this would result in more accurate patient care through multiple providers working with the same patient data (HealthIT.gov, 2018). Also, when patients agree to use wearable technology, they’re taking an active approach in their health (Rao-Gupta et al., 2018). This often leads to increased health outcomes because patients are more honest with their providers, increasing accuracy in data numbers.
