Evidence-Based Proposal and Annotated Bibliography on Technology in Nursing 

Emerging technology illustrates the importance of designing and developing new ideas, strategies, and policies based on technology in a healthcare organization. Advancements in technology help healthcare organizations and staff members especially nurses to effectively treat and monitor patients to enhance the safety and health provided. Remote patient monitoring devices are becoming an essential part of nursing practices due to the effective implementation of information technology in ensuring the quality and safety of patient health and the early and on-time detection of issues related to patients’ health for better monitoring and treatment. 

Evidence-Based Patient Care Technology

Early recognition of the problem plays an important role in providing early treatment which helps in reducing the problems and health issues that occur due to the delay in responding to the deteriorating conditions of the patients. Moreover, technology provides solutions without any ambiguities which result in a better understanding of the problems of the patients and generates improved patient safety outcomes. Nursing technology also helps enable nurses to provide quality treatment to patients with remote monitoring sensor devices and improved communication through wireless communication (Kooij et al., 2022). Patient records are also processed, and organized safely with complete confidentiality using technology-based record keeping devices and systems. Technology has great importance in healthcare organizations and benefits the staff members most importantly nurses by providing quality assured technological healthcare solutions to problems (Boikanyo et al., 2023). The patient care technology I have chosen for my research is sensor devices which are wearable and help in the constant monitoring of the patient’s health condition. The patient’s heart rate, level of oxygen, and temperature of the patient along with other vital signs facilitate the quality improvement and care provided to the patients. 

Research Methodology

The research is based on the evidence-based approach of determining the impact of sensor device usage in a healthcare facility by the nursing staff and other interdisciplinary teams. A thorough research is conducted using different research-based platforms including PubMed, CINAHL, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, Springer, and BioMed Central. The research was based on keywords including ‘Sensor Devices’, ‘Remote Monitoring’, ‘Nursing Technology’, ‘Wireless health communication’, ‘Quality of Patient Health and Safety’, and ‘Health Information Technology’. The research provides sufficient and evidence-based data about the beneficial impact of remote monitoring and sensory devices on the health of patients and the efficiency of nursing staff. The research also helps in understanding the long-term sustainability of healthcare information technology through the training and education of nursing staff thus ensuring the health and quality of effective patient care and treatment.

Impact of Patient Sensor Devices on Patient Safety, Care Quality and Interdisciplinary Team

Hassaballah, H. J., & Fayadh, R. A. (2020). Implementation of wireless sensor network for medical applications. IOP Conference Series Materials Science and Engineering, 745(1), 012089–012089. https://doi.org/10.1088/1757-899x/745/1/012089

This article defines how patient sensor devices are helpful for the safety of the patients and ensuring high-quality care to the patients. Wireless systems are becoming the need of time due to their efficiency and reducing the cost of treatments thus providing helpful solutions to people having serious health problems. These systems are most importantly useful for the countries in which population growth is increasing and the healthcare organizations with advanced technologies are decreasing. People in those countries are unable to visit hospitals daily due to the high traffic in hospitals. elderly people are the major count of the people who can’t pay their visits to hospitals daily for their basic routine checkups, Thus this problem has been solved by patient sensor devices that play a major role in analyzing the basic vital signs of the patient along with the patient’s health condition. Sensor devices can determine the heart rate, temperature of the patient, blood pressure level, and oxygen level. These measurements can help nursing staff along with other interdisciplinary teams in monitoring the condition of the p[patient continuously while providing wireless guidelines to the patients regarding their health condition and the precautionary measures needed to keep them healthy, safe, and sound. A wearable and all-time accessible sensor device system enables health practitioners to analyze and determine emergencies early and respond to them with great efficiency and accuracy. Detecting emergencies on time and responding accordingly to the situations can save a lot of patients from deteriorating conditions thus improving the quality of the treatment provided to the patients along with enhancing the patient safety and care protocols. These sensor devices can be operated by any healthcare individual after gaining proper information and knowledge about its functionality which eventually benefits the interdisciplinary teams in managing and maintaining the organisational efficiency and staff effectiveness. Most importantly the sensor devices are efficient in cost which is the major concern of the patient and the healthcare organization. Cost management is of great value especially in healthcare organizations and with smart technologies healthcare organizations are efficiently managing their businesses.

Current Evidence Integration into Recommendation

Azodo, I., Williams, R., Sheikh, A., & Cresswell, K. (2020). Opportunities and challenges surrounding the use of data from wearable sensor devices in health care: Qualitative interview study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(10), e19542. https://doi.org/10.2196/19542

This article demonstrates that in today’s world of technologies, all healthcare organizations are moving and prefer to move towards the new advancements in the healthcare sector not only for patient safety purposes but for better functionality of the healthcare organizations. The structural infrastructure of the healthcare organizations is costly and they are unable to maintain the new advanced technologies demand of the growing population. Sensor devices and wireless communication not only benefit organizations in achieving high-quality patient safety and health outcomes but also reduce the demand for human resources.  These sensor devices also eliminate the problem of staff shortage and incompetence of staff while dealing with emergencies and deteriorating patient conditions. sensor devices with wearable facilities have the systems to track the activity of patients at any given time. These devices can monitor daily steps taken by the patient, temperature of the patient, blood pressure, breathing functionality, and also the level of stress. All these measurements help the interdisciplinary teams in handling patient emergencies with efficiency and monitoring patient condition constantly without putting any extra effort. Sensor device monitoring enhances the collaboration of interdisciplinary teams as these devices are a combination of computers, information, sciences, technology, the internet, and other technical disciplines. All the disciplines together can analyze and implement these devices to enhance the standard of treatment given to the patients. Collaboration of the teams and disciplines always plays an important role in providing effective health and safety treatment to the patients because of their great communication abilities, shared information, and enhanced exposure to situation handling. These devices help manage the security of patient data along with treating and monitoring health diseases through wireless communication technology.

Organizational Factors Influencing the Selection of Technology

Hommedieu, M. L., Hommedieu, J. L., Begay, C., Schenone, A., Dimitropoulou, L., Margolin, G., Falk, T., Ferrara, E., Lerman, K., & Narayanan, S. (2019). Lessons learned: Recommendations for implementing a longitudinal study using wearable and environmental sensors in a healthcare organization. JMIR MHealth and UHealth, 7(12), e13305. https://doi.org/10.2196/13305

This article reflects the idea of health as the basic fundamental of all human beings and providing efficient, high-quality health and safety to all human beings is the priority of all the healthcare organizations. Advancements in technology create a great influence on all healthcare organizations regarding patient safety and health. The most important organizational factor is the reduction cost needed for the structural management of the healthcare resources including advanced machinery and devices. It also reduces the cost from the patient end who can’t afford the daily visits to the hospitals and the people who are at remote locations and can not afford onsite hospital visits. Providing health to all humans with great efficiency and effectiveness is the agenda of healthcare organizations and remote monitoring of the patient’s health condition and providing treatment accordingly complies with this organizational agenda. Achieving goals and fulfilling the agenda is one of the greatest progress of any healthcare organization and through technology, almost all healthcare organizations are now providing effective treatments useful for patient health and safety. Monitoring patient’s stress levels remotely using sensor devices helps both the caregivers and the patients in understanding the cause of stress and anxiety and the measures that can be used to eliminate these problems. Most people do not visit hospitals for stress-related problems hence with healthcare organizational support and technology implementation this problem also can be solved at a large scale with efficiency and effectiveness. Moreover, sensor devices and wireless communication technology make it easy for healthcare organizations to manage patients along with the staff members and ensure the comfort and well-being of the staff members. shortage of staff and staff burnout are very concerning problems for healthcare organizations but with the use of remote technology, they can efficiently manage staff and patients and enhance their capacity to provide high-quality health and safety to the patients.

Implementation of Technology in Healthcare Organisations

Mbunge, E., Muchemwa, B., Jiyane, S., & Batani, J. (2021). Sensors and healthcare 5.0: Transformative shift in virtual care through emerging digital health technologies. Global Health Journal, 5(4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.glohj.2021.11.008

This article defines that the implementation of smart devices is always easy compared to the structural devices that need a lot of installation and maintenance effort. However, The implementation of smart devices like sensory devices that are wearable with high functionality tracking systems is much easier and of low installation and maintenance cost which is helpful for healthcare organizations that can not afford heavy advanced machinery and devices for their patients. The tracking systems in sensory devices help in regulating the patient’s health condition, tracking daily health activities of the patients, organizing patient health data and information along monitoring the treatment required by the patients. The way of using sensor devices to perform and control so many tasks efficiently and effectively at the same time will be beneficial for the nursing staff and other interdisciplinary teams. It reduces human effort by introducing the smart way of performing normal daily routine tasks thus effectively considering the well-being of the patients. These advantages motivate healthcare organizations to adopt new trends and technologies in healthcare facilities for better and improved patient outcomes. Moreover, the implementation of smart technology and devices is more efficient and easy as compared to other systems. The important factor about the implementation of smart sensor devices is that they allow the patient to be well aware of their changing condition and more concerned about maintaining his health by following the precautionary measures prescribed by the health professionals. Population growth is one of the major concerns of healthcare organizations as most of the organizations are unable to deal with the growing population problem regarding the provision of high-quality health and safety to patients. To tackle this problem the implementation of smart devices was crucial as with the help of these devices the organizations can monitor as many patients as they are required to provide careful treatment. These are some of the basic reasons for the involvement of information technology with healthcare organizations while some reasons including maintaining the confidentiality of the patient’s data also of great importance. 

Conclusion

Technology in nursing and healthcare organizations is of huge importance due to the major concern of supply and demand. The demand for advanced technologies is increasing in healthcare organizations because of their effectiveness and efficiency. The matter of concern is human health which is never compromisable at any cost therefore the best practices are being introduced to assure patients high quality health and safety. The technology regarding sensor devices is gaining popularity for many reasons but the most important is, that these devices reduce life losses along with providing the opportunity for the staff to deal with the health problem of delayed response to deteriorating patient conditions efficiently and on time (Angelov et al., 2019). Organizations are also benefiting from these sensor devices by resolving the major concern of cost management. These devices are helping patients, healthcare organizations, and the community together by providing smart remote opportunities to those who can’t afford daily onsite hospital visits and organizations that are unable to cope with the growing population.

References

Angelov, G. V., Nikolakov, D. P., Ruskova, I. N., Gieva, E. E., & Spasova, M. L. (2019). Healthcare sensing and monitoring. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 11369, 226–262. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10752-9_10

Azodo, I., Williams, R., Sheikh, A., & Cresswell, K. (2020). Opportunities and challenges surrounding the use of data from wearable sensor devices in health care: Qualitative interview study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(10), e19542. https://doi.org/10.2196/19542

Boikanyo, K., Zungeru, A. M., Sigweni, B., Yahya, A., & Lebekwe, C. (2023). Remote patient monitoring systems: Applications, architecture, and challenges. Scientific African, 20(1), e01638. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sciaf.2023.e01638

Hommedieu, M. L., Hommedieu, J. L., Begay, C., Schenone, A., Dimitropoulou, L., Margolin, G., Falk, T., Ferrara, E., Lerman, K., & Narayanan, S. (2019). Lessons learned: Recommendations for implementing a longitudinal study using wearable and environmental sensors in a healthcare organization. JMIR MHealth and UHealth, 7(12), e13305. https://doi.org/10.2196/13305

Hassaballah, H. J., & Fayadh, R. A. (2020). Implementation of wireless sensor network for medical applications. Conference Series Materials Science and Engineering, 745(1), 012089–012089. https://doi.org/10.1088/1757-899x/745/1/012089

Kooij, L., Peters, G. M., Doggen, C. J. M., & Harten, W. H. V. (2022). Remote continuous monitoring with wireless wearable sensors in clinical practice, nurses perspectives on factors affecting implementation: A qualitative study. BMC Nursing, 21(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-022-00832-2

Mbunge, E., Muchemwa, B., Jiyane, S., & Batani, J. (2021). Sensors and healthcare 5.0: Transformative shift in virtual care through emerging digital health technologies. Global Health Journal, 5(4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.glohj.2021.11.008