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Monday, February 4, 2019

Useful Information Regarding Telehealth Adoption

By Margaret Price


It is no doubt that technology is taking over the world. Today, it is not possible to name any single industry or sector that does not make use of technology in its operations. However, some sectors and industries have adopted technology at a higher rate and level than others. Even those that are slow in technological adoption are catching on. Here are facts regarding telehealth.

Among the sectors in which technology is widely applied is the medicine sector. In existence currently is an emergent field referred to as tele-health. There is an elaborate application and definition of tele-health. It is described as the employment of electronic information systems and telecommunication in supporting health activities. According to the definition, the technologies are used in supporting long distance clinical care, health administration, professional health related public health, and education.

In simpler terms, tele-health involves the use of technologies to distribute health-related services. It allows long-distance patient-clinician contact and care, education, monitoring, remote admissions, intervention, reminders, and advice. In addition to that, practitioners are able to use tele-health to hold meetings, supervise others, and make presentations. The integration of healthcare systems and health data management are all included in this field.

In most instances, the terms telemedicine and tele-health are used interchangeably. It is however critical to know that the two are used in reference to somewhat different concepts. Whereas telemedicine is comparatively shallower in its description since it only defines remote clinical services for instance diagnosis and monitoring, tele-health on the other side is deeper.

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.

For success in tele-health, one ought to meet some given prerequisites among them being presence of a reliable and strong broadband connectivity. Broadband signal transmission requires some infrastructure including microwaves, optic fiber, wires, and cables. Quality and volume of communication between the two parties involved is determined by bandwidth quality. Most patients are limited from purchasing the infrastructure due to the price of acquisition.

As technology gets better and more accessible, the implementation of tele-health becomes a reality. However, besides access to the right infrastructure, there are certain factors that must be considered by health facilities before offering these services to patients. One of the activities that must be undertaken before starting to offer these services is performing a needs assessment.

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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