Technological Advancements In Health Care

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a way of medically imaging the body with the use of a magnetic field and radiofrequency waves. (1) As image quality of MRI continues to improve, more MRI exams are being ordered. Increasing MRI exams leads to increased wait times. Due to current wait lists, the health status of patients may decrease, influencing the type of treatment the patient will require once removed from the wait list. (7) The advances in technology have increased in the past decade, with MRI procedures are vastly growing to provide superior diagnostic quality compared to other modalities. New technologies are also allowing for faster scan times and further increased image quality. (9)

Healthcare delivery in the United States has morphed through substantial changes over the years with most changes occurring as a result of technological advances in medicine. Though technological advances directly affect health care delivery in America, other factors affect it as well. As reported by Ball (2012), two of the earliest and most important technological advances that affected the system of health care delivery in the United States were the invention of the x-ray and the discovery of germs. These two advances drastically altered the health care delivery system and illustrate the way in which other technological advances may have bearing on the system. Further, these technological advances have drastically altered the public opinion with regard to the health care delivery system in the United States. Unfortunately, the resulting public opinion of the current health care delivery system is not necessarily a positive position. According to Jonas and Kovner (2008), this is probably due to the fact that health care in the United States remains a mystery to most. Additionally, the public opinion of the health care delivery system will continue to be affected by advances in technology as it was by the identification of germs and the use of x-rays in medical diagnosis.

An ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging, more commonly known as an MRI, are two common ways doctors obtain pictures of what is happening in one’s body. An ultrasound uses soundwaves to penetrate human flesh. As these waves encounter things of varying density in the body, the waves are reflected back differently. Due to these waves’ reflections, the ultrasound machine can formulate an image in real time, and physicians can interpret these pictures to give diagnoses (No Author, 2008). On the contrary, an MRI uses a powerful magnet to align atoms in the body. These atoms create their own rotating magentic field which a scanner can identify and create a picture from (Lewis, 2014). Although an MRI gets higher quality images and scans through bone and air, an ultrasound is ultimately better and more commonly used because it is cheaper and more accessible.

As the world is becoming more technologically advanced, doctors and scientists are inventing new, harmless, and painless ways to observe your internal systems. In 1970, Raymond Damadian was able to connect the use of magnetism and radio waves as an instrument that could be of use in the medical field. He was able to create a tool that would change the medical world. This machine gives clear images of the inside of the body, making diagnoses easier to determine and also more accurate (Bergman).

In 1946, two men, Felix Bloch and Edward Purcell, discovered the magnetic resonance phenomenon and just 4 years later the first magnetic resonance image was created. By 1977, a scientist, Raymond Damadian, after receiving a patent to build a magnetic resonance imaging machine, produced the first MRI of a human body. This new technology through the work of many scientists was evolved into the MRI scanners used by doctors throughout the world today. This invention has changed the face of modern medicine but, unfortunately in The United States, MRIs scans cost a more, on average, than any other country in the world, and are being misused at a staggering rate. In order to fix these issues, health care professionals and consumers of MRIs must step

Doctors can get highly refined images of the body’s interior without surgery using MRI. By using strong magnets and pulses of radio waves to manipulate the natural magnetic properties in the body, this technique makes better images of organs and soft tissues than those of other brain scanning technologies. MRI is particularly useful for imaging the brain and spine, as well as the soft tissues of joints and the interior structure of bones, as

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a technique that uses a magnetic field and radio waves to create detailed images of the organs and tissues within your body. MRIs are largely used in the medical field today because of their ability to create detailed images of the human body which can be used for diagnostic purposes. In 1971 a paper in the journal Science Raymond Damadian, an American physician and professor at the Downstate Medical Center State University of New York reported that tumors and normal tissue can be distinguished by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). He suggested that these differences could be used to diagnose cancer, though later research would find that these differences, while real, aren’t consistent enough for diagnostic purposes. Damadian 's initial methods were flawed for practical use, relying on a point-by-point scan of the entire body and using relaxation rates of the tissue in your body, which turned out not to be an effective indicator of cancerous tissue.

One of the main technologies that has been the primary component for detailed images is the MRI machine. This device was specifically designed to provide detailed images of the human body by using a powerful magnet that aligns the nuclei in atoms causing them to produce their own magnetic field which is detected by the scanner thus creating an image. (Morris, 1528-1529) Even though we have this capability, there are new developments in detailed imaging such as three- and four-dimensional (3D and 4D) technology. (Morris, 1531-1532) 3D and 4D imaging provide an efficient and accurate real-time look inside the human body. We now have the use of 4D ultrasound that have proven to be useful during pregnancy to evaluate possible birth defects of unborn babies as well as 4D MRI technology that is a non-invasive way to visualize blood flow in arteries. (Morris, 1531-1532)

MRI, or Magnetic Resonance Imaging is a technique using magnetic waves and radio-waves to investigate the human anatomy and physiology. The usage of the magnetic waves protects patients from other harmful effects present in other forms of scans, such as the ionising radiation in CT scans. The process of how an MRI operates is complicated, and involves many principles of Physics, by using the water molecules within the human body to construct a complex, three-dimensional view of the anatomy . The MRI is far more advanced than many other imaging techniques used for humans. X-Rays, and other scanning devices do not have the same in-depth view accompanying and MRI, and even with the presence of Barium , and other contrast material that increases the quality of the image, the image itself is two-dimensional, and does not have anywhere near the amount of detail observed in an MRI1. Likewise, the CT scan, which can provide imaging in far more detail than an X-Ray, however has the danger associated with using the radiation which has been reported to lead to effects such as cancer or the breakdown of DNA

Medical technology encompasses a wide range of healthcare products and is used to diagnose, monitor, and treat diseases or medical conditions that affect humans. This may included but not limited too, pharmaceuticals, vaccines, and medical equipment. Such technologies are intended to improve the quality of healthcare delivered through earlier diagnosis, less invasive treatment options and reductions in hospital stays and rehabilitation times. Recent advances in medical technology have also focused on cost reduction. Medical technology may include medical devices, information technology, biotech, and healthcare services. The impacts of medical technology may involve social and ethical issues. For example physicians may seek objective information from technology rather than listening to subjective patient reports. A major contributor of healthcare expenditure in America is the advancement of medical technology. According to several studies it is shown that there is a correlation between the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) and money allocated to healthcare. One of the leading theories is that medical technology is growing faster than expected.

Preoccupied with the new treatment technologies, the medical field has missed the opportunities provided by the digital revolution to match its internal growth with improved communication with the recipients of their service in its mission of serving its patients. Situation, where the insiders like Volandes claim that the field needs disruption, but the establishment is trying to transfer part of responsibility back to the patients (as Mulley suggests in “Stop the silent misdiagnosis: patients’ preferences matter”) leads to the conclusion that the medical es¬tab¬lish-ment has already lost communication channels with the patient. While opening the comm¬u¬ni¬ca-tion channels throughout the world has marked the digital age, the medical field missed the op-port¬¬unity to openly connect with its patients and understand their needs.

Technology has been advancing throughout history. People life has changed. Most of the people now have longer lifespan than before. As technology advances, the medical field advances accordingly. With these advances, people can survive from deadly disease. For example, chickenpox was deadly before a vaccine was found. With modern medicine, many diseases became curable. However, DNA mutations diseases where it survive and passed through our DNA to many generation can be difficult to cure and tracked. For instance, type two diabetes could be inherited from the family. According to Joslin Diabetes center (2016), if a person has parents with diabetes, it is more likely to develop a type two diabetes than other people. In addition, DNA mutations could develop a cancer. As National Cancer Institute (March 14th, 2016) reported that in 2016 there are 1,685,210 people diagnosed with cancer.

Over the course of many centuries, medical technology has developed to a great extent. Studies show that recent equipment has evolved more in the last ten to twenty years than in the past thousand years. Before human time, people learned to treat themselves by just using natural substances. Now-a-days, our hi-tech systems in the medical field have been created for the most effective tools for a high level of patient care. While they advance the tools, it will then allow for quicker diagnosis, less pain, and fewer costs, which in the end will help save more lives. Some people are accepting that modern technology can buy them more time to live while others might find it quite alarming because they fear

An increase in new technology within medicine is often thought to be advancement within society, because it increases the overall health of a population. Human innovations like full-body imaging through Magnetic resonance imaging or MRI, minimally invasive surgeries through the use of a robot called the Da Vinci, and the development of antibiotic prescriptions has increased life expectancies and assisted medical professionals to properly diagnose and treat a patient. However, these inventions do not come without consequence. For example, though antibiotics have saved millions of lives, it has also allowed the development of “super bugs”. These new bacteria have evolved to become stronger and more fit so they can evade the antibiotic, killing a great amount of individuals and becoming the next threat in medicine. Nevertheless, most professionals agree that antibiotics are still crucial to saving lives from bacterial infections and despite the negative side effects, this treatment has prolonged life. Therefore, it can be determined that the advantages of using antibiotics for treatment, in spite of not knowing the consequences when antibiotics were first used, outweigh the disadvantages (Aminov, Rustam I., 2010).

Stethoscopes have been around for nearly more than 200 years. From the early modern stethoscopes made of brass and wood, to common acoustic stethoscopes doctors use these days. Now, digital/electronic stethoscopes have been invented in which they are advanced and has more uses than acoustic stethoscopes. However they are much more costly than other stethoscopes and also tend to be at a heavier weight. These digital stethoscopes provide detailed information and have many functions to for the doctors to better analyse patients.