Medical prescriptions are given to almost all patients in nursing homes and it's routine to change doses or types of medication and according to a study published in The American Journal of Medicine there are an average of 1.9 million adverse drug events (ADEs) in U.S. nursing homes. If a mistake is made when the prescription is filled the patient's condition may deteriorate and lead to serious complications. It is far safer if the nursing staff can do their rounds with a mobile panel pc using an EMR system for fast and accurate reference. Most hospitals have adopted the eMAR (Electronic Medical Administrative Record) but many nursing homes still use the phone-book sized paper records from which they transcribe individual dosing instructions from handwritten records. Health care patient records have traditionally been compiled manually on paper, where missed updates and erroneous reading of prescriptions and treatment instructions have resulted in damage or fatalities among patients. Perhaps the main reason that long-term care facilities are slow in adopting the latest Information Technology is the capital outlay to equip the facilities with PC kiosks and wall mounted pc units. The expenditure may be challenging but the price of continuing with paper MARs could be the paying of fines when adverse drug effects are severe enough to be reported. The strain on nursing staff is greater when they know they are bound to make a mistake sooner or later that will be blamed on human error. Nursing can be a stressful job at the best of times and that tension can produce indifference or outright hostility to the patients they must see every day. Touch-screen kiosks exist in many businesses to take payments from customers and other functions. The medical software must be more complex however as there are tasks that have to be coordinated and readily available at the point of care. Mobile portable medication carts can dispense drugs as instructed on the computer records. Many health care facilities have installed wall mounted kiosks where the patient can buy the prescription as one might buy an airline ticket from a kiosk. The concept is the same as a vending machine but with sophisticated data processing which can take incoming information from the field and update the records at the health care facility. At a time where it's technically possible to store the medical, dental, financial, professional, and criminal records, as well and your family, friends, and other details of a person's life on one tiny chip, paper records are going the way of the platypus as the future closes in on our privacy. Right now the eMAR technology works by using a bar code system which defines the state of one's medical condition along with medications but there are plans for tagging all citizens several years from now by placing an RFID chip on passports, driver's licenses, and eventually in your forearm to keep track of the identity and location of each citizen. There are several products that can shield their data from Radio Frequency Identification chips on cards or passports but it will be under the control of future governments how much data will be allowed to be shielded. The abuse of personal freedom is a real possibility under a less-than-beneficent group controlling powers of future governments.
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