Health+&+Safety


 * ICT and Medicine**

ICT is mainly used by the organization, NHS (UK National Health Service). It is used in diagnosis, treatment and care, administration, medical training, patient records and in communications between staff and patients. For the diagnosis stage, ICT is used in the body scans and monitoring systems to help the doctors to diagnosis the illness. For example a CAT (computed axial tomography) can be used to create a 3D image of the patient’s body to identify tumors or cancers.

Hospital administration is done mainly by computer. They are used to record their visit, allocate beds, order food, make appointments, etc. The larger the hospital is the more it needs the computer to organize the numbers.

Medical training is assisted by computers by describing and showing the different symptoms so that doctors can practice. The computer can simulate the human body and show the functioning of the body, or show the different effects drugs can do to the body. Also it supplies the newest medical information and techniques. (E.g. NLH (National Library for Health))

Another large part of ICT in medicine is the medical records the computer can hold. It hold medical history and how they were treated for each disease. Different advantages appeared from this method. The advantages were that records can be searched retrieved easily, occupy little space, entered quickly, records are backed up, and other reasons.

The NHS Direct Website has information on health features, health care, medical conditions and their treatments. The Website is [] It has to be considered that the use of computers particularly for very long periods of time can be very unhealthy. The room where the computer is located has to be adapted to the needs of the user: Fully adjustable chair; arms at 90 degrees, relaxed and monitor positioned so that the user looks down slightly. The typists who use the computers the whole day for their work are very disturbed by the layout of the letters which was designed very long ago in the goal of increasing efficiency without taking care of the security side of the work on computers. This has led to serious injuries in numerous cases. The wrist has to be relaxed. The computers being connected to mains electricity are to be treated carefully and when moved the power cable should be first to be disconnected and last reconnected. Staring at the computer screen for a long time is a very demanding activity for the eyes and governments have installed laws protecting computer-using workers. The population has also been efficiently informed about the risks of computer radiation. There is also another aspect to the dangers of computers: The Internet is completely unregulated, there are many sites containing undesirable/illegal material like pornography and young children need to be protected from viewing them because even quite ordinary and innocent searches can unearth these sites. The security systems installed in schools need to be combined with computer-use supervision by parents at home.
 * NHS Direct**