Medical technology and it's impacts on the Nigerian space

What is Technology?

In the evolution of the world, global essence has proven to be more robust than thoughts. In other words, the world population has become to prove as a defining situation for the world leaders and even the individuals themselves, as food scarcity tends to grow and manpower tends to be more needed but hereby can’t find this required manpower because of the lack of strength. How can a man without food in his stomach hustle and bustle without getting tired or even, sick? As a result of these turn around in situations, the introduction of technology has hereby, suffocated these problems into lesser problems to ponder on, hence enhancing and improving manpower. Technology, in the simple sense, is an easy, crafty, and advanced means of development. The technology involves the scientific and practical method applied to achieve commercial, industrial and comfy objectives. Technology embodies a variety of things and as such, it provides a variety of solutions! In recent times, technology has served as a pace-maker for many individuals, professionals, and practitioners. It serves as an effective and efficient means of services rendered by them, hence, providing top-notch services and sometimes weird results depending on its use. Technology has proved useful in many aspects of the career world. For instance, technology can be found in schools – Where computers, programming, projectors, and smartphones are now part of the school curriculum and include extracurricular activities, of course. We can also find technology in the career of lawyers – Where security footage serves as evidence in courts, where audio recordings are also part of the evidence in court, and many others. And of course, technology can also be found in the medical world, which is where will be our main focus in this article.

What is Medical Technology?

Typically, medical technology is everywhere around you. Over the years, medical technology has been very helpful in the healthcare system globally. Medical technology has helped to improve health systems and cured injuries, and also, in terms of diagnosis and prognosis, medical technology has come a long way. From pregnancy tests to ultrasound scans, eyeglasses, and stethoscopes, when you’re ill, medical technology has helped medical practitioners help diagnose the cause of your illness, hereby, providing you with a solution to get you better. Medical technology, generally, is an improved, advanced, and relatively easy means of carrying out medical activities on individuals. Medical technology has facilitated the development of medical equipment for medical aids. Let’s look at an instance of how medical technology has taken hold of the medical world. It is imperative to know that almost every medical practitioner is all in use and has great support of medical technology since it makes their work relatively easy. You can hardly find practitioners that are still in use of the traditional medical system. Let’s look at a practical example, taking the Coronavirus Disease 2019 – COVID-19 for short, as an example. This disease was reported by the WHO on December 31, 2019. However, COVID-19 proved to be a very deadly disease that resulted in a global lockdown of states and businesses. As a result, because of the evolution of technology in the world, global medical precautions ought to be taken and this also served as a means to global medical awareness. Also, many and several medical tools were developed and acquired that helped as preventive measures. For example, we have the forehead thermometer for checking the temperature in a quick and sterile way, medical facemasks, anesthetic ventilators, and many others. This situation also facilitated many tech improvements in the medicals, like how the vaccines were made.

Evolution of Medical technology in the Nigerian Space

Since the beginning of the 21st Century, Nigeria’s educational system has improved to great taste through many studious graduands that have set a good pace of knowledge and improvements in the medical space of Nigeria’s system. Also, since the improvements of ICT in the country, every aspect of the career world has improved to a great scale that has eventually set the country to great standards in the global market. Truly, Nigeria has its fallbacks in infrastructure and other certain qualities, but there are fewer shortcomings in the minds of the citizens. Let us scale back to the covid-19 days. During the covid-19 period, here, almost all countries of the world faced this pandemic, and as a result, precautions needed to be taken to prevent the contact of this disease, however, every country needed to upskill their resources. These moments served as a real change in most countries’ medical enthusiasm. Hence, taking technical measures to prevent the disease. These moments facilitated great means of acquiring medical tools for the country, hence, a lot of education and enlightenment was made through ICT and other various means. How has Technology helped Medical Practitioners in Nigeria? Technology has been a very helpful tool in the healthcare system both locally and internationally since it has helped in first-hand treatments. It has helped doctors and nurses make accurate diagnoses. Many developments have been made to create medicines, and build huge technical facilities to hasten and help patients get better healthcare. A lot of medical practitioners are now even reskilled in medical technology. Most medical practitioners out there now learn new things they did not even learn while in the college of medicines. Hence, this is resultant of the more advanced and professional medical practitioners! With the help of medical technology, doctors and nurses do not need to be in close physical range with a patient with the help of remote patient monitoring. Also, with the aid of medical technology, most medical practitioners can engage in digital therapeutic sessions. That is, therapies do not have to be one-on-one sessions like they used to, but with the help of smartphones or personal computers. Also, credibility among Doctors and Nurses should be taken good note of because mostly all solutions to medical problems are displayed on the net and this is a good reason for medical practitioners to stay aware of information on the net and around them. Also, medical technology has introduced the data collection system, where the patient’s name, time of arrival, drugs prescribed, and all other important information about that patient are saved for future references to avoid misappropriate mix of prescription and diagnosis. This also helps in the manufacturing of aiding devices like hearing devices and speaking devices. Tech is also used in the research to cure conditions and also prevention i.e immunization.

What are the fallbacks of Medical Technology in Nigeria?

One of the fallbacks of medical technology in Nigeria can be traced down to some of Nigeria’s infrastructural problems. Here, some of the buildings of certain medical facilities are horrible and sometimes not spacious enough for the introduction of new appliances. Even if it comes to mind, they have no choice but to put it behind them. Another traceable fallback is the fact that some of these tech appliances are somewhat costly hence, causing medical facilities and practitioners to settle for less, and sometimes, settle for nothing. Also, as regards data collection, there can be certain evil perpetrators or hackers that can access the information of patients illegally, hence causing certain unrest among practitioners. Data can be removed and replaced if not properly screened. Tampering of data can be of huge disadvantage to the tech world compared to paperwork where a line of stroke could be very obvious. Also, the lack of competence among doctors and nurses is a disturbing effect.

Suggestions and Conclusion

Certain things can aid the use of medical technology, for instance, the use of telemedicine and online access to health care workers may help cover up some of the health system gaps. This aid can make appointments more convenient and can also reduce the long queue in the hospital and brings care closer to where a patient is. However, this might not seem to apply to the tech illiterates. As a result, it’s best to also create enlightenment and awareness among the medical practitioners and also patients on the benefits of technology on affairs of the medical system. Also, there should be no need for the traditional means of patients having to look for their registration cards from a bunch of other cards, rather, their data can be stored online where it can be accessed with just a search of names on the system. And now, that brings us to the end of this article. Great thanks to my brother Pharm. Jimoh Boluwaitfe, a final year student of the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and my sister, Nurse Anisere Timilehin for sharing their insights with me on their experiences. I believe you are enlightened! Cheers.