Healthcare Informatics: Tele-health technologies
1) Tele-health technologies represent a sub-division of healthcare information technology which aid in delivering long-distance health education, public health, clinical care, health administration and relevant information. They encompass hardware as well as software and enhance general system efficacy through the maximization of individual practitioner productivity and elimination of geographical care obstacles. Perhaps the most ideal use of tele-health technology is real-time interactions, where patients and practitioners located at different places interact via audio- and video-enabled devices. Providers and patients may also be located at the same place, interacting via such virtual-connect technologies (e.g., videoconferencing) with a remotely-located expert. Such appointments facilitate on-going care via one’s routine physician without needing in-person appointments (Chiron health, 2017).
2) Taking into account extant tele-health options and approaches for assessing systemic implementation plans with regard to advantages and disadvantages in primary care facilities, the ideal choice is audio- and video-enabled devices. Substituting virtual appointments for conventional physical visits to practitioners can free precious space for those whose health condition necessitates in-person visits. Such substitution is applicable to episodic patient care as well, enabling better access to scarcely-available experts. Further, it may allow aggregation of individuals suffering from rare ailments across several healthcare facilities for creating enough volume and sustaining expert subspecialists’ practice. Virtual visits with experts for a second opinion in case of complex health problems...
Such approaches may decrease gaps between rural and urban care delivery through greater access to specialist care in medically underserved areas, or care access for specific diseases. This may also help enhance work life quality for practitioners working at large urban specialty and general facilities through supporting better staffing models, allowing them to remain available from home to ‘virtually’ oversee critical events among hospitalized patients. Virtual patient appointments may lower urgent care clinic usage, decrease hospitalization and re-hospitalization, and introduce a virtual house-calling trend. Constant medical attention when transporting patients to healthcare centers is hard or even, at times, impossible owing to foreseeable conditions like monetary hardship, distance, medical limitations, etc., or unforeseen events like weather conditions, work demands, familial crises, travel restrictions enforced by law enforcers, etc. (Schwamm, 2014).
3) Home monitoring is a great service, which allows healthcare providers to observe and gauge patients’ health information across cultures, geographic locations, and socio-economic groups. Such monitoring encompasses application of non-video as well as video technologies, which promote greater health service access, self-care and illness management, and proactive, timely interventions for gleaning positive results. Decisions pertaining to choice of technology (which include Store-and-Forward, messaging, video, and virtual monitoring of pulse oximetry, weight, vital signs, glucose etc.) are guided by individual patients’ clinical requirements and…
