Technology and Public Health
By Dulce Maria Ruelas
Faculty, College of Nursing and Health Care Professions
National Public Health Week is about bringing awareness to issues we deal with but may never speak about. Thus far we have been discussing vital topics in our lives— like healthy communities, violence prevention and rural health. What have you been thinking public health is? Have you tried to define it?
Today’s daily theme is technology and public health. Stop and think how your life has changed with technology, how do you use your smart phone, smart speaker, do you have a GPS system in your vehicle or tracker on your wrist? Technology has morphed the public health sector by creating a window of opportunity for all ages from monitoring your blood glucose level, blood pressure cuff or birth control devices.
I was just at the ophthalmologist (a physician that specializes in diseases of the eye) last week and the intraocular pressure (eye pressure) was taken with a contraption that was foreign to me. Imagine sitting in a chair where the medical assistant tells you we will put a machine on your eye but it won’t hurt. I do not know about you, but I blink when I am told anything about the eye area.
There was a pen apparatus with a bright blue light that slowly starred straight into my eye. This is called applanation tonometry (Bright Focus Foundation, 2019). Sounds foreign right? My eye was numbed and as if it were magic, an art of some sort, the tip of this contraption ever so gently touched my cornea and eye pressure was measured to detect diseases like glaucoma.
As we continue to assess different technologies in our lives, as simple as an application on our tablet for meditation or as complicated as the equipment for eye pressure let us continue to be mindful of what technology does and the potential for technology in public health.
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References:
- Bright Focus Foundation. (2019). How is Eye Pressure Measured? Retrieved from https://wwwbrightfocus.org/glaucoma/article/how-eye-pressure-measured
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Grand Canyon University. Any sources cited were accurate as of the publish date.
