THE SOCIAL ROLE OF HEALTHCARE TECHNOLOGY
THE SOCIAL ROLE OF HEALTHCARE TECHNOLOGY

Summary/Abstract: Defined as “the drugs, medical equipment, health-care procedures, supportive systems, and the administrative systems that can tie all these disparate elements together”, medical technology can be considered one of the most important supply factors influencing the complex processes inside and outside of health care system. As it is shown in different papers, technology trends are impacting the future of healthcare, being more social than ever before. Health care itself became the most significant items of social public expenditure. At the community levels, the social networks are useful in sharing information about certain diseases, so can be considered as an important part of the educational process of patients and their caregivers. At the individual levels, medical technology can improve the quality of life in many circumstances by playing its role in prevention, treatment, cure and rehabilitation in chronically health conditions like breast or ocular prostheses. In these last cases, the social role of medical technology is associated with the social role of body image, when targeting of social comparisons for physical attributes. The aim of this paper was to make a review of these issues, adding some personal thoughts derived from personal professional experiences.

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