9. Computers in health care

There are many examples of how computers and IT systems help doctors and hospitals deliver efficient and effective health care to patients. Here are just a few of them:

Patient records systems

Patients records used to be paper-based. Every time they were admitted to hospital many forms would be completed. All of their treatment was recorded on charts, nursing records were documented by hand. For a patient who was admitted to hospital regularly, these paper records could become very large to handle.

Imagine how many thousands of people are admitted to a hospital in just one year. It could take a long time to physically find old records from the many thousands which have been stored over time - and imagine the problems if they had been misfiled.

Many hospitals are now switching over to computerised record keeping systems. This means that once they have entered the details about a patient, no matter how many times that patient is admitted in the future, their records can be found very quickly.

Computersied record keeping systems allow details of medical treatment to be stored.

Ambulance control systems

When you dial 999 and ask for an ambulance one will be sent to you as quickly as possible.

This can only happen because the ambulance control centre have a system that lets them know exactly where every ambulance in the county is at any given time.

They can see which ambulances are already carrying a patient to hospital or are already on their way to another emergency. They can see which available ambulance is the closest in distance to you.

Diagnostic tools and equipment

Hospitals use a wide range of equipment which contain embedded processors. Things like:

• Computer Aided Tomography (CAT) scanners
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners
• Ultrasound Scanners

Without such equipment, it would not be possible to diagnose medical and surgical conditions so quickly.

Other hospital equipment is used to monitor patients. Things like:

• Automatic blood pressure monitors
• Heart monitors
• Oxygen monitors

Other hospital equipment is used to treat patients. Things like:

• Intravenous drug measurement
• Ventilators
• Anaesthetic equipment
• Surgical robots

Medical research

Computers are used a great deal in medical research.

The Pharmaceutical industry uses super computers to model how they think new drugs will work.

Universities are mapping out the human genome in an attempt to identify the role of every gene in the body.