Hello everyone!
I am Alicia Hoyte, and I am currently a Case Management Assistant for a physical rehabilitation hospital, with 14 plus years in the healthcare industry. I hold a bachelor’s degree in healthcare management. I am originally from Guyana, South America, but Atlanta is my home for the past 2 decades.
My passion for work social work was ignited 5 years ago, I typically work with the geriatric community, and I find it to be very rewarding. As such, expanding my knowledge and career in this field is the reason I am pursuing a master’s in social work.
Technology is important in my social life. It affords me multiple ways of communication and information in at every level, whether its news, social media, food, navigation, gardening…everything I need is readily available.
Professionally, technology has changed the workforce. It enables me to remote work when needed, order equipment with a few clicks, access medical information, have real time updates or status of pending documents and task management. Without the connectivity of technology, there will be significant impact in the way I can be productive.
AI technology is new to me, I have ethical and professional concerns, however, I am open to learning.
Technology can positively impact social work by improving access to care, like mobile health clinics and adversely impact social work in the form of exposing confidential information.
Looking forward to learning, creating and excelling with my fellow Panthers!
Hi Alicia,
It was a pleasure reading your introduction and your interest in working with the geriatric population. You have a wealth of knowledge in healthcare which goes hand and hand with the geriatric community. I look forward to discussions with you during the semester. Ai is also new to me as well and I am learning more about it daily. I am excited about how Ai and technology can improve the social work area, however I am concerned with the ethical aspect as you have mention.
Hello Alicia,
I also agree that with the rise of emerging AI technology, there is a potential risk to patient and client confidentiality. I hope that as these technologies continue to develop, there will be opportunities to strengthen safeguards, especially when serving vulnerable populations such as the geriatric community you mentioned. I’m looking forward to exploring this further in our course.
Hi Alicia,
I also don’t have any experience using AI but have some ethical concerns. I have chosen to stay away from it up to this point. I’m concerned with privacy and the safety of clients. But I am also worried about the ecological impact it has on our planet. I wonder if at this point it is doing more harm than good? I haven’t used technology much professionally so I am interested to see what this class can teach about it’s use in social work!
Alicia,
Thank you for sharing your experiences and your thoughts. It is great to have another one of you interested in older adults. I have worked with older adults over the last 15 years and they are my people.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts and perspectives from a public health framework. I understand the impact of technology of access to information. That is true in the academic world as well as the medical. It is also true that technology, as demonstrated during the pandemic, has allowed access to specific services and resources that would not have been available previously. We will talk about that, and about the impact of the digital divide.
But now we are facing decisions about the impact of technology on interpersonal relationships. Whether looking at social media or AI, we now have to struggle with the issues related to how much of the personal will we allow to be changed, I look forward to many more interesting conversations.
Dr P