Friday, 1 February 2019

Useful And Essential Facts About Telehealth

By Margaret Price


It is crystal clear that the world is being taken over by technology. Currently, it is impossible to mention one sector or industry that is not using technology in its operations. There are some industries and sectors that have embraced technology faster and more than others. Even the sectors that may be considered slow are gradually catching on. This is what telehealth is all about.

The field of medicine is one of the fields that have adopted technology widely. Today, a new field called tele-health is emerging very fast. Tele-health has a very elaborate definition as well as application. It is defined as the process of using telecommunication and electronic information technologies to be able to support health activities. The definition states that these technologies are used to support long-distance clinical health care, patient, and professional health-related public health, health administration, and education.

Tele-health makes use of technologies for distribution of services related to health. Here, advice, reminders, interventions, remote admissions, monitoring, education, clinician-patient care and contact are possible over long distances. In addition, practitioners can also make use of tele-health for presentations, supervision over others, and meetings. This field also includes the incorporation of health data and healthcare systems management.

A majority of the times, people often confuse between the terms telemedicine and tele-health. Nonetheless, it is key that one understands that the two refer to different concepts, with telemedicine being a bit shallower than tele-health. The description offered for telemedicine only touches on remote clinical services, including diagnosis and monitoring.

On the other hand, tele-health includes all aspects of telemedicine and on top of that, it includes promotive, curative, and preventative care delivery. Because of the deeper concept and definition that tele-health involves, the term is more preferable over telemedicine. Some of the aspects that are included in tele-health are counseling, disaster management, home health, dentistry, chronic disease management and monitoring, and physical and occupational therapy. Consumer and professional education is also an aspect of tele-health.

There are a number of mandatory prerequisites for successful implementation of tele-health. This include a reliable and strong internet connection. The required infrastructure for broadband transmission includes wires, cables, microwaves and optic fibre. The quality and volume of communication between the involved parties is determined by the quality of the bandwidth. The acquisition cost of this infrastructure is what has always limited a majority of patients from accessing the service.

As technology is gaining accessibility and improving, it is becoming feasible to implement tele-health. Nonetheless, prior to health facilities providing patients with this service, they ought to consider some factors in addition to having proper infrastructure. Among the activities to be undertaken prior to offering the services is conducting an assessment test.

Tele-health services are best offered by a health facility that does not fully utilize its equipment. In light of this, tele-health implementation helps put underused facilities to more proper utilization. It is better to find out if there are any collaborators in the area before implementation. Should there be any, several involved parties can work jointly to provide more holistic health services. The main goal of implementing tele-health should be to solve a certain identified social problem in the society.




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