Telemedicine is an evolving technology in medicine. Telemedicine is the delivery of health care using information technology. The development of telemedicine will really have great impact on the delivery of health care to individuals. With telemedicine, you can get quality health care from any part of the world, under the supervisions of expects in the various fields of Medicine.
Telemedicine is the use of medical information exchanged from one health care center to another via electronic communications for the health and education of the patient or health care provider and for the purpose of improving patient care regardless of the patient’s location. Telemedicine includes consultative, diagnostic, and treatment services.
Need For Telemedicine
Over the years, rural communities have continually suffered from a lack of satisfactory health care resources. Too few primary health care practitioners and the need to travel long distances for specialty care have made it difficult for many rural residents to receive the care they need when they need it. It is on this basis that the need for telemedicine arises. Telemedicine provides one tool for improving this situation.
Below are the various definitions of telemedicine on the internet
- Telemedicine involves the use of telecommunications technology for medical diagnosis and patient care when the provider and client are separated by distance. ...
- Telemedicine involves the use of telecommunication technologies to deliver medical information and services to locations at a distance from the care giver or educator.
- Telemedicine involves the delivery of health services via remote telecommunications.
- Telemedicine use of audio, video, and other telecommunications and electronic information processing technologies to provide health services or assist health care personnel at distant sites.
- Telemedicine involves the use of telecommunications and information technologies for the provision of health care at a distance. New methods continue to evolve over time, but this includes real time videoconferencing as well as store and forward methodologies.
- Telemedicine is the delivery of healthcare from a distance using electronic information and technology such as computers, cameras, videoconferencing, the Internet, satellite, and wireless communications.
- Telemedicine is the delivery of health care services, where distance is a critical factor, by all healthcare professionals using information and communications technologies for the exchange of valid information for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease and injuries, research and evaluation, and for the ...
- Telemedicine is the provision of health care services from a distance using audio, video and computer technology. Traditionally uses videoconferencing to diagnose an illness and provide medical treatment. Also used to view or teach surgical procedures.
- Telemedicine is defined by the US Food and Drug Administration as the delivery and provision of healthcare and consultative services to individual patients and the transmission of information related to care, over distance, using telecommunications technologies. ...
- Telemedicine is the delivery of medicine at a distance. The term is composed of the Greek word τελε (tele) meaning 'far', and medicine. ...
Benefits of Telemedicine
Below are the various benefits of using telemedicine.
- Telemedicine will help to Reduce Health Care Costs: The cost of health care is quite enormous for any economy. But with telemedicine, such huge cost will be reduced drastically. Consider the cost of transferring or transporting a patient from one hospital to another, with a considerable long distance. Consider the cost of transporting a patient abroad for medical treatment. Also, consider the cost of transporting a specialist from one country to another, just to deliver health care. With telemedicine, such expenses will be averted.
An obvious benefit of telemedicine is the potential for transportation cost savings, such as the potential for saving a portion of the millions spent annually on patient automobile travel expenses, emergency air evacuations or other forms of transporting patients across the large expanses of rural communities
- Telemedicine Saves Time: It is obvious that telemedicine saves time. Consider the time that would have been used on transporting a patient from a rural area to an urban area to consult a medical specialist. With telemedicine, such time that would have been spent on transporting a patient from a rural to urban area is saved together with prompt delivery of the required health care service.
- Telemedicine helps in accurate of diagnosis: Telemedicine also helps in accurate diagnosis of patients. With telemedicine, there is reduction of medical error. Two heads are better than one. WIth telemedicine, doctors can easily get a second opinion from another doctor in another location. Such second opinion helps in maintaing acurate diagnosis of patients. such accuracy on diagnosis will help the doctor to save costs to both the patients and the hospitals by using the correct medicines without any trial.
- Telemedicine Increase Efficiency: With all the above mentioned benefits of telemedicine, there is increase efficiency.
- Telemedicine enhance medical learning. Telemedicine provides health care providers, patients and families with the opportunity to participate in health care education especially on the latest medical advances without having to travel long distances.
Limitations of Telemedicine: Just like most technology has its own limitations, Telemedicine also has its own limitations.Telemedicine will definitely deprive doctors of the delicate cues they often pick up when seeing a patient in person.With telemedicine a doctor will not be able to auscultate, inspect and feel of the body of the patient.Even if telemedicine can do this, it can not be compared with seeing the patient in person.This is one major limitation of telemedicine.