Telemedicine, the Future of Health Care
The term telemedicine is derived from the combination of a Greek word “Tele,” which means “distance” along with a Latin word “mederi” meaning “to heal”. Distance can be a constraint for people living in remote places to access timely, good-quality health care. Telemedicine attempts to overcome this constraint by bridging this gap in between the patient and healthcare provider. The World Health Organization defines Telemedicine as, “The delivery of healthcare services, where distance is usually a crucial issue, by all healthcare experts using info and communication technologies for the exchange of valid info for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease and injuries, study and evaluation, and for the continuing education of healthcare providers, all inside the interests of advancing the health of men and women and their communities”. As an example a patient or perhaps a health care provider, or caregiver could use a wireless phone to automatically upload very important signs and send it to a remote monitoring center. Telemedicine was one of the initial technologies which improved the spread of healthcare services wherein regions that have been considered inaccessible initially have been also able to access healthcare facilities. Get much more info about telemedicine toronto
Benefits of Telemedicine
Telemedicine improves accessibility to health care facilities for the patient living in remote regions and makes it possible for physicians to reach out to patients and expand their services beyond their own clinic. Telemedicine reduces travelling time for both patient along with the health care provider. In addition, it decreases the number of hospital stays, enables for shared health skilled staffing that translates into lowered health care price. Along with the reduction in travel time it also reduces the tension associated with traveling. It improves continuity of patient care as the patient, primary care physician, specialist and family members could be actively involved through a consultation.
Challenges of Telemedicine
Physicians might not be conscious from the benefits or utility of telemedicine and could be resistant to work with such e-medicine technologies. Building trust in individuals in regards to the outcome of these newer technologies is an additional challenge. Language could be a barrier in some nations. For instance only 65.38% of India’s population is literate with only 2% becoming well-versed in English.
In the hospital point of view, implementation of telemedicine entails investment of higher capital linked with all the technology and communication and so this may well become financially unfeasible. Telemedicine is supported by many sorts of software and hardware continues to be immature and needs to evolve.
Conclusion
Telemedicine will be the answer to the question of solving the issue of inaccessibility to the healthcare facilities. With suitable implementation it may serve multiple purposes as well as the basic or specialized healthcare services. Current advances in the field of information technology has enhanced the high-quality in the telemedicine services and also decreased the connected charges to an awesome extent. Having said that, concerns about safety of patient data, or becoming completely dependent on such services are being raised in relation to telemedicine. Nevertheless, judicious use of this health technology can save much more lives than ahead of and minimize the healthcare expenses to an awesome extent.
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