Overview of the Assessment
Public Health Informatics is defined as the analytical implementation of information, computer science and advance technology to public health groundwork, proceedings and learnings comprising of various health promotions, preventions and making better health services and reporting. This field majorly focuses on the applicability of information science & relevant technology that further promotes the health of the society; disease prevention and it also monitors the operations largely in context to government. Health practitioners are aware of the usage of computers, networks and database but they are not much aware of the usefulness of the public health informatics. Information technology has the power to enhance and even revamp public health practice. These days, social media tools are being used prominently in almost all fields. Social media networking sites are used in public health due to the barriers like adequate funding and less number of available resources. Public health professionals are utilizing these tools, especially Twitter as a medium to facilitate the well being of people and their individual professional development (Hart, Stetten, & Islam, 2017). Social media has the potential to revamp public health communication amid people and organizations or agencies. Twitter is considered to be one of the social media’s ICT tool which is followed by 262 million international account holders (Thackeray, Neiger, & Wagenen, 2012). We are residing in the age of immense change, where learning from previous experiences, innovations and exchanging of opinions and ideas is utmost important to deliver the promises of electronic health (e-health).
This report aims to evaluate the usage of the social media platform, especially the twitter accounts for the promotion of public health informatics. The first part of this document shares the information gathered from three different public health-related accounts on Twitter and it also critiques how Twitter can be used as a social media tool for public health informatics field.
@DigitalHealth
Digital Health Service organization provides the digital productivity training applicable to all the industries which are equipped with modern communication technologies (O’Carrol, 2017). Detailing a 20% expansion in efficiency, (DHS)Digital Health Service preparing workshops to enhance the performance by assisting individuals to oversee their computerized instruments. This account has been created in 2008. The HR managers and executives are helped so that they can raise the performance of their organizations by excelling in digital technology use. Digital Health is fundamental to the reduced stress and efficient communication of well-being; knowledge sharing & working; innovation capability to collaborate. https://twitter.com/digitalhealth
Evaluation of Three Public Health-Related Twitter Accounts
The training sessions do not permit the trainees to use any computer or other technology-aided equipment. Moreover, it enables the participants to reveal good and bad digital habits, de-clutter the digital tools and make an improved version of their own, attainable action plan of modifications required for the improvement in the performance. The experiences shared by the followers and tweeters show that Digital Health benefits the people under high stress and the ones with low productivity, where the digital tools used by them have become a drain on their productivity.
@ehealthpaho
PAHO stands for Pan American Health organization which is an international (PH)public health agency working efficiently for the betterment of the nation. There are 35 different countries which are working as its member states. It is the part of the UN(United Nation ) systems and is working in close association with WHO(World Health organization) to deal with priority health issues. The twitter account depicts that it is working to improve the local as well as a national health system in collaboration with governmental and non-governmental organizations, educational health institutions, community groups, ministers of health and many more. PAHO likewise advances the utilization of research proof to advise health care choices and policymaking through the usage of information interpretation techniques. https://twitter.com/ehealthpaho The followers tweet in different languages as they belong from different communities and cultures. (Nambisan, Luo, & Kapoor, 2015).
@_PHAA_
PHAA stands for Public Health Association Australia. It is found to be the Australian agency for providing statistics on health & welfare and information. https://twitter.com/_PHAA_ The followers of this account used the English language to tweet on this account. For example, on 1st Oct 2019, PHAA shared the data depicting the escalation of the obesity problem among more than half of young adults as per the ABS data. Other tweets covered topics like a healthier population, cervical cancer, tobacco control etc. The types of content shared by this public health account keep the users engaged, thereby making their presence active on the Twitter account. It also uses hashtags and URLs to improve the likelihood that the audience may find the information encoded on the tweets more fruitful and thus may retweet on it. A lot of useful content has been shared in the media segment along with clear photographs which grabs the attention of the followers (Bhattacharya & Polgreen, 2014).
After the evaluation of three accounts discussed above, a comparison table has been depicted below to get a more clear picture of the analysis.
|
Describing Elements of the accounts |
@DigitalHealth |
@ehealthpaho |
@_PHAA_ |
|
The focus of the account |
This account has been created by Digital Health Service which aims to help people in using their digital tools through an improved manner via providing workshops and personal coaching. |
It focuses to raise the living standards, wellbeing and health of Americans. |
This account operates for the improved health conditions and well-being of the Australians as well as it aims to improve the health results worldwide through shared information. |
|
Number of followers |
384 |
9,437 |
13,900 |
|
Number of tweets/frequency |
2,066 |
3,685 |
9,658 |
|
Type of tweets or content posted |
People who have been part of the training or workshops conducted by Digital health have shared their testimonials and comments on their twitter account. Also, the company keeps on updating its followers with the latest articles and trending news to improve their digital health. |
It keeps on sharing the trending news and research publishings and articles related to health concerning issues in the nation through its media segment on the twitter page. followers also post their queries which are addressed by the agency officials with supportive evidence and suggestions. |
The tweets were mainly based on the modern rules on utilizing drugs, to make people aware general health issues, reminders where audiences were asked to put question links, reports addressing the mental and different health concerning issues. |
|
Ease of understanding |
The tweets done on the account depicts that the training provided by this organization is informal, fun-loving and engaging |
It shares the content in a readable form and simple manner through this tool of social media platform and it keeps on directing the followers to its official website for more updates with every single update on its Twitter account |
The information shared on this account could be easily understood by both medical as well as non-medical professionals. |
Comparison of Three Accounts
Table 1: Comparison table of three twitter accounts
After the observation gathered from the above-discussed twitter accounts, it is very much clear that Twitter can be utilized effectively around the public health field and what role does it play in improving public health. The public health informatics field discusses in three vital domains of public health which are described below in this section.
Health promotions
Health promotions are the way to make the people aware of their health and enhance control over it. For the accomplishment of this goal, it is necessary to educate people about different types of prevailing diseases and health issues(WHO, 2019). At this place, the ICT tool Twitter accounts come into the picture. Public-health accounts can be used to address a large number of audiences. The health professionals and researchers not only make the people aware but they also interact and study the users through this tool. Twitter acts as big data sources for the researchers due to real-time characteristics of the content, ease in the accessibility and finding the publically available information.
Health Preventions
Health prevention stage is the early detection of the disease, reducing a load of disease as well as its risk factors. Twitter accounts are used as the medium of health hazard preventions by the early detection and spreading the required awareness(NCBI, 2019).
Making Better Health Services & Reporting
This implies that sufficient quality of care required to provide additional health benefits, and effective utilization of resources. The past publishings and researches reveal that Twitter messages or tweets on Twitter account help in tracking and analyzing influenza rate and increase the awareness of the UK and US in the field of public health (Broniatowski & Dredze, 2013).
Twitter is a very user-friendly and cost-effective tool of social media which effectively provides information and knowledge regarding public health along with posing a positive impact of health campaigns on a huge number of users or audience (Albalawi & Sixsmith, 2017). In this digital and internet-based era, people are more connected on the social media platform, therefore at the time of any public health crisis, Twitter proves to be beneficial in making people aware about the concerning diseases, health issues and their protections (Newberry, 2019).
There are few attributes which make Twitter ineffective for the right delivery in public health such as the absence of posts related to health information. For example, the first account which I followed had many tweets from non-medical sources. Like, this account had more tweets related to the training, workshops and achievements. The second attribute identified is the absence of source citation or the missing author names. This attribute declines the popularity of twitter for sharing information. Another issue was the bias nature observed in the handling of these three accounts. There is an impulse to post around their personal appearance. Also, the twitter account could be unproductive if it is not maintained or updated regularly. For example, in the study, it was observed [email protected] account did not post much content in the media section of the account and there was very less number of followers existing.
The Role of Twitter in Public Health Informatics
The major challenges related to public health on twitter account are the selection of the right kind of content to be posted by the public health account holders. The physicians and healthcare professionals are not supposed to share their personal information, patient’s medical illness and state of health without seeking prior permission of their patients. The barriers which restrict the working of the public health organizations is their less activeness on the twitter accounts and the lack of users engagement. Individuals handling the twitter accounts of respective public health organizations might not be well trained and skilled. The biggest limitation of using twitter is negative criticism, as customers even sometimes comment and complain about the health services publicly. The negative comment might result in framing the bad reputation of the public health account holder. Another limitation posed by twitter is its limited character limit of 280 characters. Organizations might take a long time to communicate effectively on twitter.
Twitter has not only become an important networking tool for the health experts but also for the patients as most of the people agreed that they prefer to choose their particular doctor based on social media. Twitter offers tangible benefits to the patients if the twitter account is used adequately by healthcare organizations and medical professionals. This could be achieved only if twitter is used correctly to construct good relationships and by spreading worth sharing information with the audience including experts, patients and public health organizational leaders. It is suggested that one should focus on spreading quality health-specific information and the content to be shared on twitter should be original and curated in comparison to others. Another recommendation for the health practitioners is to use the right hashtags as they are frequently misjudged by many when they are used on twitter, bringing about a typical abuse of this supportive device for content disclosure. It is essential as a twitter user to utilize close to three hashtags per tweet to abstain from abusing this supportive procedure. The hashtags utilized ought to be a blend of hashtags utilized in the specific industry by others, just as a couple of hashtags made by you explicitly to arrange your substance. Medical professionals should be provided the right kind of training to use social media effectively, which can pose a positive influence on the quality followers.
Conclusion
This report has successfully discussed the significance of social media tool i.e Twitter to promote health care services. Twitter helps to understand the medical field just like a layman and also helps to gain some useful insights. New products and processes related to the medical field can be well known through this platform. It is mainly applicable in making health preventions, health promotions and making better health services & reporting. Twitter is found to be very user-friendly and cost-effective tool. Three public-health related twitter accounts (@DigitalHealth, @ehealthpaho, @_PHAA_) have been analyzed to predict the ways and the impact of their communication on the users through their twitter account. Twitter can be used more effectively by spreading quality health-specific information, by using the right hashtags and providing the right kind of training to the medical professionals so that they can share and communicate positively.
Barriers to Uptake of Telemedicine in Australia
Introduction
Telemedicine is the mechanism through which health professionals or doctors communicate with their patients. Through this mechanism, patients sitting at home can consult their doctors due to which it has brought revolution in the health care sector. This part of the report discusses the barriers to the uptake of telemedicine in Australia and how those barriers can be addressed. Based on the analysis and shreds of evidence, few recommendations are made in this context.
The Australian government aimed to provide telemedicine to the patients falling in all the regions, but this process carries along with many barriers. The research depicts that telemedicine service holds a share of 0.24% of the total clinical activity. Along with this 30% of the Australian population resides in rural areas. The Australian population and rural people are underprivileged as far as telemedicine facilities are concerned. The vast majority of the Australian Medicare services falling in its rural region don’t have the telemedicine administration (Jang-Jaccard & Nepal, 2014). Therefore, it is evident that telemedicine service is in the elementary stage especially in the Australian rural regions. Along with this second type of barrier found is the funding. There is an enormous measure of the prerequisite of funds for accumulating the equipment via which the medicinal services association can speak with their patients. Due to this funding barrier, the vast majority of the healthcare associations fail to implement the telemedicine process within their association (Moffatt & Eley, 2011). In addition, third barrier included is the infrastructure availability while adopting telemedicine process which is must where doctors can accommodate and can easily communicate with their patients in an effective manner. Again, most of the Australian Medicare services failed to provide efficient telemedicine service to the patients just because of the lacking infrastructural facilities. The fourth barrier found is the lack of adequate skills required by the doctors to operate the telemedicine service in their organizations to address the patients effectively through telemedicine. The healthcare associations and the professionals are required to use the pertinent techniques which may assist the healthcare organizations to communicate properly with the needy patients which are some way or the other lacking (Bagot & Moloczij, 2018). The barriers discussed above are classified into ICT issues and management issues in the table below.
|
Classification |
||
|
S.NO |
ICT Issues |
Management issues |
|
1. |
Lack of Skills required by the medical staff |
Lack of telemedicine facilities in Australian rural areas |
|
2. |
The traditional approach of doctors towards the usage of telemedicine |
Lack of telemedicine administration in rural regions of Australia |
|
3. |
Funding |
|
|
4. |
Infrastructural issue (Lack of adequate infrastructure) |
Table 1: Classification of issues
The information technology these days has brought revolution in the healthcare industry and medical research field. Australia is moderately empowered with ICT infrastructure. ICT has the potential to innovate new products and services, so this can prove beneficial for the healthcare industry as well. ICT can play a significant role in improving telemedicine service in Australia. By adopting the ICT, healthcare organizations or services can introduce telemedicine and its applications, m-health, computational scheme and internet-based telemedicine. Moreover, ICT assists the organizations to introduce new and improved software which can benefit both the patients as well as doctors. This software can be used by the doctors to prescribe the medicines and patients can be easily treated and advised for their better health at distant locations. Past research articles and cases depict that many medicare institutions have used ICT to improve their service and lend quality service to the patients. It is found that medical organizations use technological equipment for different types of tests and treatments of their patients and if in addition to it improved internet facility and access is used then healthcare organizations will be able to communicate easily with their patients (Sutherland & Hodge, 2016). It is seen that doctors in rural areas do not prefer to use the internet and telephone in their routine and prefer to adopt traditional methods of providing healthcare services. Such rural doctors should be motivated and trained to adapt to the latest technologies. It is must that healthcare organization in Australia should make arrangements for infrastructure to improve the telemedicine services. The doctors should be given professional training to use the telemedicine equipment. Doctors can be facilitated to use the videoconferencing, which will help in overcoming the barrier of lack of resources and funding. Through this technology doctors can interact with their patients face to face and can diagnose their problems conveniently.
Recommendations to Address Barriers
The Australian government should focus on providing the required ICT infrastructure in the Australian rural areas. If the government will support the healthcare organizations and will join hands to provide required services in the rural areas, people residing there will be able to communicate and consult the doctors easily; thereby improving their medical services and treatments (Mathur & Srivastava, 2017). Other ways to address the barriers of the telemedicine is the collaboration of private and public sector, expansion of funding and creation of sustainable profitable business models which can satisfy the needs of service providers, patients and government all at one platform.
Conclusion
In this part of the assessment, role of telemedicine in Australia has been studied, majorly with the identification of the barriers such as ineffective telemedicine administration in rural areas, funding, lack of infrastructure availability and lack of adequate skills required by the doctors to operate the telemedicine service in their organizations to address the patients effectively through telemedicine. The aspects which will help deal with these barriers are also discussed in the report to present a few recommendations to improve the telemedicine services. Having said that, telemedicine is prevailing in Australia in its initial phase; therefore, healthcare organizations should make better strategies to adopt telemedicine process effectively.
References
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Bagot, K., & Moloczij, N. (2018). Sustainable implementation of innovative, technology-based health care practices: A qualitative case study from stroke telemedicine. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30193566/
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