1. Introduction and background
For many years, doctors and health service researchers have been searching about a new technologies in telecommunications to improve the health care. After a lot of work Telemedicine was implemented and become an important solution for health care consultations. The American Telemedicine Association (ATA) declared the Telemedicine as "the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications to improve a patient 's clinical health status"[1]. So, in order to be successful in Telemedicine as a technology that supports and provides health care over distances, it is important that we have high quality hardware and software solutions and high speed communication technologies. Telemedicine technologies are used for different purposes in the field of health care such as health education, health research, administration, and public health. There are very good examples of Telemedicine experiences, for example telesurgeries. In the telesurgery there are a more advanced and complicated technologies and procedures because it is life critical procedures that the surgeon needs to implement each step correctly and must be aware of what is exactly happening on the other side. The long distances may effects the communications and causes delays between the two sides which is the major problem for the remote surgeries. So, it must be implemented using high speed telecommunications technologies such as the fibre optics.
Telehealth is an innovative approach to health care that is rapidly expanding in all areas of patient care. It has been shown to be cost effective and is rapidly being integrated into everyday practices from clinics, hospitals, court systems, school systems and even the local drug store.
Telehealth is remote exchange of data between a patient and doctor that facilitate in better diagnosis of patients and monitoring typically used to support patients with long term conditions.
It excludes the option of face-to-face communication during examinations. Finally, telehealth focuses on educational and research purposes involving all types of caregivers with telecommunication between patient and health professionals. Health care delivery in its use of information, records, communication, and will continue to grow with the Internet. The rapid expansion of information technology into daily life and business has healthcare delivery begin to adopt and optimize the use of technology.
The benefits of telehealth consultations are immeasurable; clients are able to access a knowledgeable health care professional and receive a telephone triage/assessment and recommendations. This allows the patient to have immediate access to good health advice and quicker solutions. Telemedicine is one of the many vehicles of telehealth; for example, the cardiologist orders an outpatient Holter Monitor trial to evaluate arrhythmias. The technician calls the patient at the sign of any abnormal rhythm and investigate the activity performed when the reading fluctuation then the reported is communicated to the cardiologist. If warranted, the cardiology staff will contact the patient with instructions schedule an immediate appointment. Telehealth services resources would benefit the client in this next example, an individual’s come in for a sick visit expecting a prescription to be written for their illness; they receive informative instructions because of the nature of the
In this context telemedicine and technological capability can respond to two major strands: the first is a simplification to ensure that with available technologies, all actors of a clinical path from taking care to resign, share real-time Useful information for themselves and for other professionals in order to identify and follow the best path. The second strand is the provision on the territory of technological capacities that are very developed in a hospital environment but whose deployment is quite circumscribed.
Access to applicable health services is often limited for people living in remote areas and for those with restricted mobility. One of the innovative implementation for a sustainable health care system in minimizing this inequality in access is Telehealth services (Bywood, P et.al, 2013). The aim of this study is to analyze the possible challenges encountered during the provision of using advanced telecommunication systems in the health care system.
I have no personal experience with telehealth, but I have witness a few promotional videos over the recent years. As technology continues to grow within the healthcare system, it will allow us to provide better care whether we are face-to-face or miles apart. Telehealth is can be beneficial to not only the healthcare workers but always the patient. Telehealth allows the healthcare system to ensure continuity of care and also evaluate patient compliance to the plan of care. Since technology is so prominent in todays society, telehealth allows the patients to have quick and easy way to contact their provider via email, blog, or videochat.
In today’s time, the Internet is really altering the way us Americans intermingle with the healthcare system. The Internet is making consumers more desirable to use it, in hopes for more opportunities. With the help from the Internet, telemedicine is becoming one of the best cultivating advanced technology in healthcare right now. Telemedicine can be defined as the use of medical information that is exchanged from one site to another (americantelemed, 2012). This process utilizes technology and digital communication in order to help patients’ progress. Important aspects of telecommunication include video, email, mobile devices, and more. So, in a nutshell telemedicine allows patients to communicate with their assigned physician about any
Through videoconferencing, Telehealth are able to give immediate diagnosis for a patient who needs urgent care (Saqui et al., 2011). A lot of effort is involve before a patient could meet with his or her doctor such as making an appointment, sorting his or her schedule and so on and so forth. By the time the person with health concern meets with his or her doctor the illness might already aggravated; consequently, the health care system through Telehealth provides a quicker and more efficient way on determining the type and seriousness of the patients and illness without leaving the comfort of their homes. By contacting Telehealth as soon as a person notices some irregularities in the person’s normal body functions that indicates that he may or may not be ill, enable that person who called to act immediately preventing the illness from advancing any further or on the other hand be reassured that there’s nothing to worry about. Furthermore, Telehealth also made the monitoring on recovering patients at their homes faster, the registered nurse in-charge of monitoring the patient can guide the patient in his recovery process through a streaming media. Any concerns that may arise in the recovery process can be solved a lot quicker, the patient can leave a message or phoned and the health care provider will respond to it as soon as possible stating the fact that Telehealth service is available 24 hours a day.
Innovations in technology can have a direct impact on our collective way of life. Indeed, the most compelling of technology innovations are those that can be used to improve the quality of human life. This is especially the case in fields such as healthcare and medicine. Fundamental to the functionality of modern society and yet plagued by critical needs and problematic realities, these are areas in which emerging technologies already coming into market readiness may be pushed into practice by virtue of their paired economic viability and social responsibility. So is this the case with telecommunications in healthcare, an area in which we are gradually verging on solutions for many of the geographical, physical and financial obstacles that have limited are ability to treat patients. According to Lin, (1999), "telemedicine enables a physician or specialist at one site to deliver health care, diagnose patients, give intra-operative assistance, provide therapy, or consult with another physician or paramedical personnel at a remote site. Thus, the aim of telemedicine is to provide expert-based health care to understaffed remote sites and to provide advanced emergency care through modern telecommunication and information technologies." (p. 28) Especially in hospital settings, these technologies have the capacity to reduce the expenditure of resource and labor during the treatment process. These features make the
The delivery of health care has always been influenced by technological developments and innovations. This is particularly true in modern health care professionals where they are obsessed with technology and rush to apply them. One of the most recent applications of ICT – Information and computer technology- is telehealth. Telehealth is the use of communication, diagnostic and information technology to provide health care when patients and providers are geographically separated [2], Technologies include videoconferencing, the internet, store -and-forward imaging, streaming media, terrestrial and wireless communications. Telehealth could be as simple as two health professionals discussing a case over the telephone or as
Telemedicine is similar to Telehealth. Telehealth refers to a broader scope of remote healthcare service but Telemedicine refers specifically to remote clinical services. Telehealth can also refer to remote non-clinical services. For example provider training and meetings (link 3). In the past the network is not as fast as now, thus telemedicine is only use in clinical services. Now, due to the development of network, more information can be transferred in a shorter period, thus Telemedicine can be to provide other non-clinical services. The word “Telehealth” refers to both clinical and non-clinical services.
When using Telemedicine humans can accomplish many great things and can benefit everyone. The potential this innovation has could be really great if they succeed on making it right. If this Innovation worked many lives will be saved across the world. As well as lives we might be able to learn new things from this and find more cures. According to professionals at the medical field telemedicine has been approving for the past couple years and as potential to keep going. Not only is this innovation good at saving lives it is also helping the economy by getting rid of competition. Even though some people see competition in the economy a good thing but it also has its downs that can really help some
There are several forms of technology that is used to monitor, assist patients with self-care management, assist physicians with delivering care to their patients, including consultation with specialist, and overcoming barriers with transportation. “60% of the healthcare executives, physicians, and nurses in this inaugural survey said that telemedicine was a high priority for 2015“ (Vockley, 2015, para. 7) Telemedicine
Telemedicine is the use telecommunications and information technology to provide healthcare to patients located in the remote or distant locations. For example: people staying in the mountainous areas or islands can get medical services right at their home with the help of smart devices or patients who cannot go to the hospital for some reason.