Telemedicine is a medical treatment when medical information is delivered from one place to another via the phone, the Internet, or any other communicating methods. By using this treatment, the patients can consult with the doctors, diagnose a health problem, and ask for medical procedures or explainations, despite being at remote areas. The main purpose of telemedicine is to improve health care by providing both the patients and the doctors with convinience. Telemedicine was mailnly used through telephone. However, the improvement in technology rapidly increased the use of video-conferencing where patients and doctors can discuss face by face.
The transaction of medical information is not only done between patients and doctors but also between doctors and other doctors. These doctors may discuss about a particular patient's illness by collaborating and giving each other their opinions in real time.Here is a video that talks about many cases where telemedicine save a child's life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6Pg9FrOwmA
Here is an article that talks about the purpose of telemedicine in detail.
- Telephone: Users can communicate by talking.
- Video conferencing: Users can interact face to face with voice.
- Internet connection: This can allow users to transfer information online.
- Internet connection: This can allow users to transfer information online.
- Wireless, infra-red, bluetoothe: Information can be transfered without any phisical cables.
- Store and forward: This is used for transferring digital images from one place to another. Taking digital images is called "store" and sending it to another place, often within an institution (hospital) is called "forward".
Home care
Telemedice will increase the oppurtunity for home care. Home care is a type of health care that is done at home and not in hospitals. This is beneficial to patients because their home is much more comforatble than the hospital. Home care will alleviate the psychological worries of the patient. This type of care is possible because there is telemedice where medical information can be transfered through the Interent, in remote areas. Robots are used in order to assist the patient. However, these robots are economically high in cost and their reliablity is sometimes questioned. In addtion, the nurse may lose their jobs or there will be less oppurtunities for them, which will arouse the issue of unemployment.
This video talks about how home care increase lives of seniors
Advantages
- Medical information can be transfered quickly in long distance
- Medical information is accessible to even rural areas
- Improve health care
- Because doctors can communicate more frequently, there will be an imporvement in the study of health in general
- Better health outcomes
- Ealry detection of the illness or health problem, which may lead to early cure
- More training for doctors and patients about health
- Sometimes pressure to the patients because the outcomes will be detected early.
- The reliability of the medical information
- The ethics of telemedicine will be mentioned later in the blog entry.
- Economically high initial costs
Bibliography
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telemedicine
- http://tie.telemed.org/articles/article.asp?path=telemed101&article=tmcoming_nb_tie96.xml
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_care
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