The term telemedicine is derived in the mixture of a Greek word "Tele," which means "distance" and also a Latin word "mederi" which means "to heal". Distance is really a constraint for people living in remote areas to access timely, good-quality health care. Telemedicine attempts to overcome this constraint by bridging this gap amongst the patient and healthcare provider. The World Health Organization defines Telemedicine as, "The delivery of healthcare services, where distance is often a important factor, by all healthcare pros using information and communication technologies for the exchange of valid facts for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease and injuries, investigation and evaluation, and for the continuing education of healthcare providers, all within the interests of advancing the health of people and their communities". For instance a patient or a health care provider, or caregiver might use a wireless phone to automatically upload crucial signs and send it to a remote monitoring center. Telemedicine was one with the initial technologies which improved the spread of healthcare services wherein places that had been thought of inaccessible initially had been also in a position to access healthcare facilities. Get far more details about telehealth toronto
Benefits of Telemedicine
Telemedicine improves accessibility to health care facilities for the patient living in remote locations and makes it possible for physicians to reach out to individuals and expand their services beyond their very own clinic. Telemedicine reduces travelling time for both patient and the health care provider. Additionally, it decreases the number of hospital stays, enables for shared health qualified staffing that translates into lowered health care expense. In conjunction with the reduction in travel time in addition, it reduces the strain related to traveling. It improves continuity of patient care as the patient, primary care physician, specialist and family members could possibly be actively involved during a consultation.
Challenges of Telemedicine
Physicians may not be aware on the benefits or utility of telemedicine and could be resistant to make use of such e-medicine technologies. Building trust in patients about the outcome of these newer technologies is a different challenge. Language may be a barrier in some nations. For instance only 65.38% of India's population is literate with only 2% getting well-versed in English.
In the hospital perspective, implementation of telemedicine involves investment of high capital connected with all the technologies and communication and so this may perhaps come to be financially unfeasible. Telemedicine is supported by many forms of software and hardware is still immature and must evolve.
Conclusion
Telemedicine will be the answer to the question of solving the issue of inaccessibility for the healthcare facilities. With correct implementation it could serve a number of purposes together with the fundamental or specialized healthcare services. Recent advances in the field of information technology has enhanced the top quality of the telemedicine services and also decreased the related fees to an incredible extent. Having said that, issues 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 a lot more lives than prior to and minimize the healthcare charges to a terrific extent.
