The Major Benefits of Telemedicine in Remote Communities

When you hear the term “telemedicine”, your thoughts may turn to 800 services like Ask-a-Nurse that offer medical advice over the phone thanks to on-call nurses that will take caller information and make a determination concerning the best course of action. Often they are prepared to deliver medical advice for simple matters like, say, severe sunburns, ingestion of poisons, or shallow wounds. For pretty much everything else they will direct you to contact appropriate resources in your area like Poison Control or emergency medical services (in other words, call 911 or head to the nearest ER). But the times, they are a-changing. And the opportunities for communications and information sharing offered by the internet have not been lost on the medical community. The result has been growth in the telecommunications sector where medical applications are concerned. In short: telemedicine. And the potential for increased healthcare options, especially for doctors and patients in remote communities, is just one of the many benefits.

Telemedicine focuses on the use of telecommunications technology for the purposes of providing remote clinical services. Generally speaking, clinical services require the patient and the doctor to be in proximity, or in other words, in the same room. There are several reasons for meeting thusly. The main reason for face-to-face interactions is so the doctor can perform a physical examination and run tests in order to deliver a diagnosis and prescribe treatment options. However, part of the import of meeting in person revolves around patient privacy. As we all know, telephones and internet communications are not always completely secure, which means that outsiders could “listen in”, so to speak, garnering private medical information in the process.

telemedicineHowever, telemedicine has evolved significantly over the past several years, to the point that communications, up to and including video conferencing, are secure enough to meet HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance rules, which protect the privacy of patient health information. In some cases, telemedicine services even employ biometrics (hand or eye scans, for example) to ensure the highest level of security. What this means for patients is that they can feel safe sharing medical information via telecommunications.

While telemedicine may not be foolproof, it does provide both doctors and patients with more options, especially when they are in remote areas where access to information, training, and specialists may be understandably limited. And the benefits are myriad. For starters, doctors have the ability to share patient files with geographically distant colleagues in a secure and efficient manner, giving them the opportunity to reach out to other healthcare providers for the purposes of getting additional opinions or even collecting patient medical history. They can also conference, email, and even communicate wirelessly without the fear of breaking patient confidentiality.

As for patients, they may soon have access to a growing network of medical information, namely their own medical history, from the comfort of their own home. And for patients that are miles away from the nearest medical facility, access to telecare could make a difference between life and death, or merely spare them the hassle of undertaking major travel to garner simple medical advice. The long and short of it is that telecommunications are revolutionizing the way that patient care can be managed. And with more and more healthcare providers beginning to endorse telemedicine, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a fixture in the medical community at large, all of which is good news for patients near and far.

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