Introduction
Medical organizations do not bypass the rapid development of technology. Nurses can access information about a patient and view his medical history and current diagnosis in a convenient database. At a minimum, these measures can increase the chance of a correct diagnosis, and easy accessibility can reduce the time for processing information. Automation is becoming an inevitable process, which is why artificial intelligence and robotics will almost certainly be applied to the nursing of the future (Archibald & Barnard, 2018). Telemedicine has long been predicted to be the future technology, but only now are the first situations being modeled, and simulations are being investigated, so far at the stages of student learning (Smith et al., 2018). Naturally, the development of information technologies in medicine should be accompanied by the highest quality security system to protect and maintain the confidentiality of information. Developments in this area are not long in coming, which requires the development of relevant competencies among the nurses involved in the process (Newaz et al., 2019). The changes will cause many difficulties in the implementation of technologies, but there is every reason to believe that they are inevitable.
In addition, the actual work process itself and its organization among nurses can change due to technology. First, the planning of shifts will be much easier by automating the provision of patient information: appointments for previous treatment, the purpose of visits, attending physicians, and much more. Second, mentoring younger nurses will now include training in IT technologies, which will soon become ubiquitous, replacing all the usual bureaucratic processes.
Patient data can be stored in Electronic Health Records (EHR), the benefits of which are described above. This type of information storage opens up access to the analysis of big data, developing expert systems that will reduce the number of errors in diagnosis (Risling, 2017). Nevertheless, it is impossible to completely replace a person in medicine, which is why even developments in the field of artificial intelligence are of an auxiliary nature: virtual assistants, drug discovery, robotic surgery, and process visualization (Wang & Lin, 2020). So far, the use of such technologies is largely not standardized; therefore, these systems are far from everywhere.
Opportunities and Challenges
An education in computer science offers many opportunities for nurses. First, they have the opportunity to adopt new approaches, understand the equipment, and start using it effectively without wasting time. Secondly, nurses at a higher level can participate in scientific discoveries that will facilitate the application of new technologies in processes that require either automation or the intervention of modern technologies. In addition, their interest and involvement in the process will attract the attention of the authorities, who will see a real plan for applying the results of the modernization of medical institutions and are more willing to finance such projects. Nurses’ collaboration with clinical software developers will provide the necessary experience in implementing and deploying such applications and speed up the search for errors, bugs, and problems that impede work.
However, there are several challenges on this issue that nurses and developers will face. Firstly, it is information security: data stored in medical institutions contain personal information about the patient and his illnesses. It is only natural for a patient not to share his illness outside the hospital, so data protection is a priority. Cybersecurity is threatened not only by direct cyberattacks on databases but also by the negligence of the workforce, many years of lack of investment in this area, and imperfect software itself (Coventry & Branley, 2018). In some cases, the entire medical system may stop working, which can cost patients’ lives. Naturally, representatives of the authorities should also participate in this event since state clinics may lose patients’ trust in the event of such precedents.
Finally, another challenge that nurses may face is the complex interface of such software. Since this development area has been used in hospitals recently, developers have not yet developed an unambiguous agreement on visualization and interface structure (Wass et al., 2019). In this regard, learning appears to be something that needs to be improved and adjusted in the future for better technology implementation (Nurse Nacole, 2021). Of course, this will require a change in approaches in education at the federal levels to standardize these competencies.
Summary of Recommendations
In this regard, it is necessary to apply several measures to improve the application of technology in nursing. First, it is necessary to emphasize teaching on information technology, both at the stage of education and directly during work. The use of technology will likely be mandatory in medicine very soon, as the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. Secondly, any implementation of technologies, especially those related to patients’ data, requires an appropriate security system. Therefore, technology should only be applied to a system that provides adequate cybersecurity not to jeopardize the data, trust, and lives of patients. Third, with the help of technology, it is already possible to establish communication between developers and informatics nurses to hone existing ideas and products in teamwork, implement new opportunities, and discuss plans.
References
Archibald, M. M., & Barnard, A. (2018). Futurism in nursing: Technology, robotics and the fundamentals of care. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 27(11-12), 2473-2480.
Coventry, L., & Branley, D. (2018). Cybersecurity in healthcare: a narrative review of trends, threats and ways forward. Maturitas, 113, 48-52.
Newaz, A. I., Sikder, A. K., Rahman, M. A., & Uluagac, A. S. (2019, October). Healthguard: A machine learning-based security framework for smart healthcare systems. In 2019 Sixth International Conference on Social Networks Analysis, Management and Security (SNAMS) (pp. 389-396). IEEE.
Nurse Nacole. (2021). Web.
Risling, T. (2017). Educating the nurses of 2025: Technology trends of the next decade. Nurse Education in Practice, 22, 89-92.
Smith, T. S., Watts, P., & Moss, J. A. (2018). Using simulation to teach telehealth nursing competencies. Journal of Nursing Education, 57(10), 624-627.
Wang, Y. H., & Lin, G. Y. (2020, January). Exploring Smart Healthcare Innovations: Multiple Patentometric Analyses. In Proceedings of the 2020 the 3rd International Conference on Computers in Management and Business (pp. 117-120).
Wass, S., Vimarlund, V., & Ros, A. (2019). Exploring patients’ perceptions of accessing electronic health records: Innovation in healthcare. Health Informatics Journal, 25(1), 203–215.