W
hen medical advice is sought through telephone, internet and other network is known as telemedicine. A fast growing application of clinical medicine. The application can be applied between two health professional or between doctor and patient using telephone, satellite technology and videoconferencing equipment to conduct a real-time consultation.
The application telemedicine seems to hear not very old. But it is not too young. In the early 1900s, people living in remote areas in Australia used two-way radios, powered by a dynamo driven by a set of bicycle pedals, to communicate with the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia.
A common mistake is the terms e-health and telehealth are at times wrongly interchanged with telemedicine. Telemedicine suggests only to the provision of clinical services while the term telehealth can refer to clinical and non-clinical services such as medical education, administration, and research. The term e-health is often, particularly in the UK and Europe, used as an umbrella term that includes telehealth, electronic medical records, and other components of health IT.
Types of Telemedicine
Telemedicine can be broken into three main categories: store-and-forward, remote monitoring and interactive services.
Store-and-forward
Store and forward refers to gather medical data (like medical images, biosignals etc) and then transmitting this data to a doctor or medical specialist at a convenient time for assessment offline. It does not require the presence of both parties at the same time.
Remote monitoring
Patient stays form the doctor far away and unable to meet with doctors physically can be benefitted form remote monitoring process. It is also known as self-monitoring/testing.This method is primarily used for managing chronic diseases or specific conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes mellitus, or asthma. These services can provide comparable health outcomes to traditional in-person patient encounters, supply greater satisfaction to patients, and may be cost-effective.
Interactive Telemedicine services
A qucik and effective interactions between patient and provider, to include phone conversations, online communication and home visits. Many activities such as history review, physical examination, psychiatric evaluations and ophthalmology assessments can be conducted comparably to those done in traditional face-to-face visits. In addition, “clinician-interactive” telemedicine services may be less costly than in-person clinical visits.
Benefits and Uses of Telemedicine
People resides in the remote area can take the advantages of telemedicine. Modern medical era is hugely blessed by the use of telemedicine. Specialties that use telemedicine often use a “tele-” prefix; for example, telemedicine as applied by radiologists is called Teleradiology. Similarly telemedicine as applied by cardiologists is termed as telecardiology, etc.
It’s a great tool to exchange view and sharing knowledge between a general practitioner and a specialist available at a remote location.