Essay On Telemedicine

The American Telemedicine Association (2012) defines telemedicine as “the use of medicine information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications to improve a patient’s clinical health status. Telemedicine has been in existence for over 40 years and was originally used to provide care for patients in remote areas who encountered limited access to health care. With the increasing use of technology in the healthcare realm, the use of telemedicine is rapidly expanding into “ongoing operations of hospitals, specialty departments, home health agencies, private physician offices as well as consumer’s homes and workplaces” (American Telemedicine Association, 2012). Medicaid views telemedicine as a “cost-effective alternative to more traditional face-to-face” medical care (Medicaid.gov, n.d.).
Types of Telemedicine
According to HealthIT.gov (2013), there are three types of telemedicine currently being utilized. The first is “live, interactive video consultation: uses videoconferencing technology to facilitate a patient visit with both physician and patient present at the same time.” This type of interaction allows the physician to exam
Examples of services that use telemedicine include subspecialty departments such as dermatology, cardiology, and ophthalmology. In addition to subspecialty expertise, telemedicine may be used when a patient is unable to travel to obtain a consultation or the patient’s primary care provider is in a remote location requesting a second opinion. Furthermore telemedicine may be used to educate patients, care providers, or relatives in order to facilitate understanding of the patient’s disease. The overall benefit of telemedicine is to improve outcome in health care and reduce secondary complications while at the same time monitor a patient at a distance. (Sarhan,