Use Of Computer In Health Care

Health Care 
Nearly every area of health care today uses computers. Whether you are visiting a family doc-tor for a regular checkup, having lab work or an outpatient test, or being rushed in for emergency surgery, the medical staff around you will be using computers for various purposes:
•Hospitals and doctors use computers and mobile devices to maintain and access patient records (Figure
•Computers monitor patients' vital signs in hospital rooms and at home.
•Robots can deliver medication to nurse stations in hospitals.
•Computers and computerized devices assist doctors, nurses, and technicians with medical tests.
•Doctors use the Web and medical software to assist with researching and diagnosing health conditions.
•Doctors use e-mail to correspond with patients.
•Pharmacists use computers to file insurance claims.
•Surgeons implant computerized devices, suchas pace makers, that allow patients to livelonger.
• Surgeons use computer-controlled devices to provide them with greater precision during operations, such as for laser eye surgery and robot-assisted heart surgery.
Many Web sites provide up-to-date medical, fitness, nutrition, or exercise information. These Web sites also maintain lists of doctors and den-tists to help you find the one that suits your needs. They have chat rooms, so that you can talk tp others diagnosed with similar condi¬tions. Some Web sites even allow you to order prescriptions online.
Two forms of long-distance health care are telemedicine and telesurgery. Through telemedicine, health-care professionals in separate locations conduct live conferences on the computer. For example, a doctor at one location can have a conference with a doctor at another loca¬tion to discuss a bone X-ray. Live images of each doctor, along with the X-ray, are displayed on each doctor's computer.
With telesurgery, also called remote surgery, a surgeon performs an operation on a patient who is not located in the same physical room as the surgeon. Telesurgery enables surgeons to direct robots to perform an operation via computers connected to a high-speed network.