New Technology Interview

Selection

As the newly elected health IT expert of California Hospital Medical Center, California, I decided to interview the former manager who handled both management and IT sector of the hospital. The purpose of the interview was to know the reasons that led him to employ tablet counter after being given an opportunity to select a technology of his choice that will be used to conduct the day to day operations of the hospital. Also I intended to know his plan that he used in the implementation of the technology.

Tablet counter machine is a machine that is widely used mainly in pharmacies and hospitals that are serving many patients. In the department where they issue drugs according to the doctor’s prescription, the machine counts the tables after the operator simply dials the number of tablets that he or she wants to give out.

Dr. Michael Olunga who I interviewed gave me the reason of the choice of technology to employ to the hospital despite the fact that he was given an open choice to choose the technology of his choice. Among the reasons were:

California Hospital Medical Center is a large hospital that serves patients all around the nation, California. Based on that many patients were delayed in the administering of the prescribed medicine mainly because the patients were queuing in a line to a pharmacy center where they are given the given medicine manually. The process was slow, and it required a lot of labor force.
California Hospital Medical Center has other sub branches in the nation that the hospital suppliers drugs to, therefore, counting the thousands of drugs to be supplied to the other branches was a major challenge, and it consumed a lot of time in fact even days.

According to me given that he was given an opportunity to choose a technology of his choice that will improve the services of the hospital, the manager did not conduct a proper research on the technologies that are currently available. Instead of concentrating on the ways of improving how to give out drugs in the pharmacy unit of the hospital, he should have first concentrated on technologies that can improve the way the doctors give out their judgment during the treatment process. There is a wide range of technologies that he may have chosen digestive sensors. A digestive sensor is an e-pill that the patient swallows and by the control of a computer, it displays the areas in the patient body that are ailing or are not performing properly. Despite the fact that it is expensive, we have to consider that the manager was given an opportunity to choose a technology of his choice without given the expense limits. Digestive sensor would have ensured that the doctor in charge of a particular patient known what the patient is unable to tell the doctor may be as a result of the intensity of the illness. Therefore, we can say it displays the silent side of the patients that they are not able to tell the doctor. Also it enables doctors to give out accurate prescriptions since according to the scan that are done by the pill/tablet, it also provide a suggestion of the prescription that doctor should give. Digestive sensors will also save the time factor that the manager wanted to solve since patients spend more time in consultation than in the pharmacy unit (Thomson et la 1998).

The other option the he had was to implement are the hospital system. The current system that the hospital is using is old fashioned and has limited efficiency. The hospital is keeping records of the patients in papers thus making it difficult when the doctor want to track down the history of the patient.

However despite my opinions concerning the choice of selection, tablet counter is one technology in the health sector that improves the services of hospitals, but first thing first and opportunities not always come twice therefore he should have utilized that opportunity.

Planning

Concerning the plan of implementation of the technology, the following are the steps that Doctor Michael used:

Conducted a search concerning the number of tablet counting machines that the hospital will require. The outcome of the search was that each section of the hospital will at list require two machine whereby only one will be used and the other one will be used in case the first one fails to function. Therefore, the second machine was like a backup.
Prepared the budget for the machine taking into account the number of machines that the required.
Schedule the day that they will start using the new technology.

In the plan of implementation, personally the research that he conducted was a tick since that enabled proper begetting. Also, the distribution of the machines in the different departments shows how demined he was to reduce if not eliminate the time spent by patients in queues awaiting to be administered drugs.Likewise he tried in the budgeting based on the fact that the hospital has a history of corruption and mismanagement and embezzlement of funds.

However, he assumed that the nurses have the knowledge on how to use the new technology that he is introducing to the hospital. Instead, he should have scheduled a time where the nurses in charge will undertake training despite that the machines require very little training. Likewise, he did not include the department that will be in charge of monitoring and in the maintenance of the new technology. Monitoring is important since with that we can be able to observe whether the machine is delivering us per expectation. In maintenance, all machines tear or wear out or even just stop functioning with efficiency with time and, therefore, there should be experts who will be in charge in the maintenance so that the machine can continue delivering their purpose services with efficiency.

Implementation

After a period of six months, Dr. Michael together with the local leaders and politicians of the area officially services that will be provided by the tablet counter machine (Nembhardat al, 2006). It was a challenge to show how the machines work since despite the length of time before implementation, not a since nurse or stuff was trained on how to use the new technology that was acquired. They had to wait for another 2 weeks until then when they started using the machine well.

In conclusion, it is important to conduct a proper research before selecting a technology that the IT technician of a health organization you would want to integrate and implement. In the research, one should have a wide range of options and among them one should choose one option that will best solve the main problems that the organization is facing. Also as the IT technician, one should come up with a good plan including budgeting and training (Plseket la, 2001).

References

Nembhard, I. M., & Edmondson, A. C. (2006). Making it safe: The effects of leader inclusiveness and professional status on psychological safety and improvement efforts in health care teams. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27(7), 941-966.

Thomson, M. A., Oxman, A. D., Haynes, R. B., Davis, D. A., Freemantle, N., & Harvey, E. L. (1998). Local opinion leaders to improve health professional practice and health care outcomes. The Cochrane Library, 3.

Plsek, P. E., &Greenhalgh, T. (2001). Complexity science: The challenge of complexity in health care. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 323(7313), 625.