Medical Use of Sensor-Based Devices, the Debates Around and Implementation in Education

Abstract

Sensor-based diagnostics are increasing rapidly and in clinics, they can transform the health care as they will be in use out of clinics as well, namely, by the non-clinicians and people without expertise. The trade-off between the advantages and disadvantages of their implementation into the clinical settings should be decisive in their use, at the current state. Yet, disadvantages must be carefully worked out and tried to be eliminated in any case, while keeping the inborn benefits. Therefore, we would like to draw attention to the reliability and security risks of personal health data and associated concerns. We further discuss the related issues of sensor-based diagnostics, mobile health (mHealth) and eHealth. The debate starts with the current states of the rules and regulations. It is argued that there is prompt need for internationally consolidated solutions for vast device types and uses onto which the local needs may have to be implemented without violating the basic assets such as the inherent privacy rights of the users/patients. The resistance factors against the sensor-based healthcare devices and applications are also conferred. There are additionally data quality and assessment issues, and in relation to the data assessment, concerns that are associated with the psychological responses of the layman to the health data are mentioned. For these and more reasons, and finally for proper use and implementation of sensor-based tests and devices in the clinical settings, education of both professionals and non-professionals seems to be the key. All these require much work and maybe even more workforces to be allocated for the emerging, associated tasks. However, there are economic benefits, and beyond those, they bring new features in the health care that were deemed to be impossible. Besides, despite the apparent unethical use risks, they can result in better ethical practices, e.g., possible prevention of unnecessary tests on animals when similar test on organ-on-chips would be failing.