This is blog 4 in a series that reflects on issues of social informatics for the course INSC 542. The article discussed was Technology and the future of healthcare (Thimbleby, 2013). I chose this article to review technology in the context of healthcare, but I discovered a view of technology that could benefit from further inquiry.
In the article Technology and the future of healthcare (Thimbleby, 2013), the author suggests that identifying principles to guide the research and development of technology in healthcare would best suit patient, provider, and healthcare systems’ needs. While technology as part of healthcare is not in question, the idea that technology is itself a benevolent promotion of well-being was examined through factors including innovations and limitations (Thimbleby, 2013). There are trade-offs to the accelerated rate of changes in technology. The author concludes that the optimum force to steer technology comes from human value systems, not electronic circuits or devices (Thimbleby, 2013).
I agree with the article that technology in healthcare should be driven by human principles and values. I attempted to gain further understanding by exploring the etymology of the term technology in order to distinguish technology from healthcare.
Technology is often associated with electronics such as computers, cell phones, or other smart devices. However, the term technology has ancient roots from the Greek technologos, which means “understanding the idea of art and ability,” and from an Indo-European term teks-, meaning “to build” (Veschi, n.d.). Among the definitions of technology examined in a literature review, there were two components in common, which were the physical and informational aspects of technology as “1) ‘knowledge’ or technique; and 2) ‘doing things’” (Wahab, et. al., 2012). This concept of technology connects the embodied products with the information or knowing how to use the products or processes (Wahab, et. al., 2012).
This is significant because the notion that technology exists only as modern electronic, computer-driven products falls short of the way of thinking or problem-solving that has arisen from human ingenuity throughout history – prior to electricity as an energy source. The plow is technology; plowing a field is a technology that once required human or animal energy source.
In fact, the pursuit of technology led to widespread mechanization and industrialization that has had unintended consequences (Pontzer, 2021). According to Pontzer (2021), the dependence on external energy (non-metabolic energy) that drives technology such as through fossil fuels correlates to the rise of modern crises – chronic, non-communicable diseases and climate change (Pontzer, 2021). Other consequences of technology related to healthcare are described in the book Bad Pharma where the pharmaceutical industry has used technology products and processes that mislead and cause harm (Goldacre, 2013). Without established principles, technology can lead to harm to society.
On the other hand, technological inventions can arise from discovery. Not every technology innovation began as a planned outcome. The American inventor Thomas Edison is known not only for his prolific inventions but also for failed iterations that “succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work” (Furr, 2011). He claimed to see market needs for inventions that were not recognized by the “customers” (Furr, 2011). In healthcare, pharmaceutical development aimed at one type of disease state has later been found to treat other disease patterns such as Rapamycin, an antibiotic later used to treat autoimmune disease (Borel, 2013).
In conclusion, establishing principles to guide technology in healthcare should be an imperative for society in order to align technology R&D with human-centered outcomes rather than profit-driven iteration cycles. However, there is a takeaway in this blog which is underdeveloped – that is the potential to view technology as an ongoing human function that offsets metabolic energy expenditure, which has led to unintended consequences. In other words, it is essential that human thought (metabolic energy expenditure) be activated to design our future in technology with identified purpose.
References
Borel, B. (2013). 9 old drugs that learned new tricks: The head of the National Institutes of Health shares medicines that turned out to have multiple uses. TED Talk. https://blog.ted.com/9-old-drugs-that-learned-new-tricks-the-head-of-the-national-institutes-of-health-shares-medicines-that-turned-out-to-have-multiple-uses/
Furr, N. (2011). How failure taught Edison to repeatedly innovate. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanfurr/2011/06/09/how-failure-taught-edison-to-repeatedly-innovate/?sh=5f39a21f65e9
Goldacre, B. (2014). Bad pharma: How drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients. New York: Faber & Faber, an affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Pontzer, H. (2021). Hotter and sicker: External energy expenditure and the tangled evolutionary roots of anthropogenic climate change and chronic disease. American Journal of Human Biology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23579
Thimbleby, H. (2013). Technology and the future of healthcare. Journal of Public Health Research, 2(3), 28–e28. https://doi.org/10.4081/jphr.2013.e28
Veschi, B. (n.d.). Technology. Retrieved March 10, 2021, from https://etymology.net/technology/
Wahab, S. A., Rose, R. C., & Osman, S. I. (2011). Defining the concepts of technology and Technology Transfer: A literature analysis. International Business Research, 5(1). doi:10.5539/ibr.v5n1p61
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