Telehealth: how it is revolutionizing delivery of health care?

Telehealth: how it is revolutionizing delivery of health care? Telehealth or telemedicine involves the use and implementation of latest digital technology in the healthcare sector to fulfill expectations of today’s consumers. Integration of digital innovation in the treatment method has transformed the delivery of clinical care services. Transformations have improved efficiency and accessibility after reducing the need to commute. It allows practitioners to overcome geographic barriers and offer clinical support via purposefully designed apps for smartphones and computers. The primary aim of using this technology is to improve delivery of medical care to all segments of the population. Health apps are extending treatment and care from traditional physical institutions to patient’s home or more comfortable locations empowering Dubai doctors. In addition to connecting and communicating via smartphone apps, it also involves connecting diagnostic devices, software and patients together to ensure better care and improved outcomes. How is it helping practitioners and patients in disease management? Telemedicine facilitates remote patient management and allows consultants and clinical care staff to communicate with their patients via emails, phone, text messages and video calls. The idea behind utilizing recent technological advancements is to reduce a total number of visits; individuals have to make to get general care or doctor advice. Remote patient care is benefiting both patients and doctors to tackle certain medical conditions. Telecare has shown exceptional results in case common sickness and chronic disease management. Now consumers don’t need to waste time visiting a clinic for routine follow up. The system allows them to share their vitals and reports via an app for consultant review. Are consumers showing motivation to use these services? As this technology is helping consumers to reduce clinical care expenses while improving treatment effectiveness with convenient disease management at the comfort of their home, the public is showing strong interest to adopt this technology. Furthermore, improved connectivity due to advancement in telecommunication industry has played a huge role in the success and tremendous growth of telemedicine industry. Consumers feel great and privileged when they see quality clinical care is accessible for them in few clicks. Video conferencing facilities make communication highly interactive while giving them a feeling of face to face communication. How is this technology helping medical care facilities? Besides benefiting patients, this technology is also helping clinical care facilities. It facilitates them to save money, time and space after enabling hospitals to monitor patients remotely. Apps allow medical staff to collect multiple patient data and send it to a central location, where a single doctor will monitor this data to see any signs of progress. It removes the restriction from practitioners to be physically present on the location and allow them to treat more patients beyond their offices. It may sound like a science fiction to many, but it is happening today in many healthcare facilities. Experts are looking after and assisting critical issues like anesthesia and radiology. Does telemedicine follow any standards? Similar to any other technology solutions, telehealth also requires following standards to maintain uniform service quality. When it comes to deciding the standard for telemedicine, professionals are agreed to follow LOINC codes and HL7 for lab side and CCR, CCD and Blue Button for care transition side. Clinical care facilities should prepare themselves to address 2 problems to ensure successful execution of these standards. These issues include inter-institution and intra-institution problems. Large healthcare facilities don’t find difficulties to implement and follow lab side standards. Though alterations may occur from one institution to other when a fax is used instead of the digital system to record and convey patient information to physicians. To overcome these transitions, clinical care units are also following standards like the Clinical Documentation Architecture by HL7, CCD and CCR. The best way avoid any deviations from standards is to collect and share data in electronic form and avoid printed materials ad hard copy of data. Endnote: Telemedicine is efficiently reshaping the traditional face of clinical care and communication methods consumers and practitioners are using to get in touch with each other]]>