Telemedicine: Medicine of the Future
Kathryn Duncan, Tyler Jones, and Simhran Patel
English 319
Abstract
Living in an area that does not have access to sufficient doctors and healthcare nearby poses a real problem. Telemedicine provides timely assistance to questions, diagnosis and scheduling for health care assistance. Telemedicine can be helpful to patients who do not have access to a variety of specialists. If a patient lives in a rural area, they do not have the access that a patient has who lives in an urban area. Using telemedicine allows patients in rural areas to have the same access to physicians as a patient in an urban area. This device is also able to transmit digital images, and store these images for a doctor to view later. Using this device can also help make the cost of healthcare more affordable. In our paper we will provide detail that really capture the numbers of people who die due to lack of convenient health care assistance.
Problem Statement
The healthcare field is developing more each day, however some people are not able to get the care they need because of the limited access they have to it. There are many places around the world, and even in the United States, that have limited access to routine healthcare. A way to help solve this problem is using Telemedicine. Telemedicine is the remote diagnosis and treatments to patients by means of telecommunication technology. Usually people in rural areas in the United States would have to drive about an hour or more just for a regular check up, and if they need to see a specialist, they would have to travel even more. Also, waiting rooms in physicians offices can make patients wait for more than thirty minutes. Usually when people live in an area where the closest health care facility is the hospital, people tend to go to the ER for minor problems, making the cost of their visit expensive compared to a regular visit to a doctor's office. Telemedicine can help solve all these problems and help evolve the healthcare community.
Historical Background
Telemedicine was first introduced in the late 1960’s due to the needs of NASA; however, it’s early states were limited due to lack of technology available and the financial and regulatory restrictions that current health-care reforms are not hindered by. One of the largest speed bumps for telemedicine was the lack of broadband infrastructure. This problem was fixed March 17th, 2010 when President Obama proposed a national broadband plan to proliferate and improve broadband networks across the United States. Obama pushing this plan into existence put wind in the sails of telemedicine, solving many of the problems that the technology faced in the previous fifty years.
Description of the Solution
Telemedicine provides timely assistance to questions, diagnosis and scheduling for health care assistance. Telemedicine can be helpful to patients who do not have access to a variety of specialists. If a patient lives in a rural area, they do not have the access that a patient has who lives in an urban area has. This device is also able to transmit digital images, and store these images for a doctor to view later. Using this device can also help make the cost of healthcare more affordable.
Telemedicine will allow convenience healthcare people who are in need of medical assistance but cannot receive it in the area they live in. With Telemedicine, a farmer in Oregon can have the luxury of a doctor in Florida for proper diagnosis. They can see the doctor in their comfort of their own home. The patients can contact any doctor they want without having to travel or leave their own home. This product will save lives and also increase the spread of knowledge in the healthcare field due to long distance communication.
Having patients go to see their physicians tend to wait for about thirty minutes or more in the waiting rooms. Patient who are probably ill do not want to wait in a waiting room filled with other ill patients. Also people who are healthy and are in the physician's office for a regular check up or just taking someone to the doctors, they are more likely to get sick because they are in the waiting room and sitting next to patients who are sick. If the patients have telemedicine in their own home, they would not have to leave their home and wait in waiting rooms just to see their physician. This would not waste time for patients to go see their doctors, and will prevent from germs from spreading from one person to another.
Telemedicine is also very important for specialists. Many people live far from doctors who live in large cities, and it is inconvenient for most people to travel to these cities just to see doctors. When a patient has cancer, or heart problems, they have to see specialized doctors, and for everyone it is really hard to travel just to see a doctor. Cancer is one of the most prevalent diseases in the world, in 2016 an estimated 1,685,210 of new cases were diagnosed according to the National Cancer Institute. Having telemedicine can help a cancer patient communicate with one of the best oncologist in the country in their comfort of their own home.
People who live in third world countries simply do not have access to health care. If they do, it is due to missionaries who are coming and going as needed, or clinics who do not have the technology needed to keep up with regular care. This graph below shows how few physicians live in countries around the world. The best physicians in the world simply do not live in these developed countries. Telemedicine has the possibility to solve this problem. It can connect people who need help to doctors who can save their lives. The patients can connect to doctors anywhere in the country and be able to get the help they need. Physicians can also benefit from helping people in third world countries. In developing countries, they are affected by more diseases than developed countries are. Telemedicine can help physicians be aware of new diseases that are in other parts of the countries. Having doctors from other parts of the world connected to these patients with diseases that are not common in the doctor's area can open up to new studies and research on these diseases. Which could help eliminate diseases from these third world countries.
This graph shows the amount of doctors in each country, it shows that third world countries like South Africa and Senegal do not have as many physicians as first world countries as the United States or Germany. Having telemedicine in third world countries could help patients in to get access to other doctors in the world, preferably doctors in developed worlds.
How Does Telemedicine Solve the Problems
Telehealth uses two different systems to provide health care. One is synchronous, which is basically real time chatting with a healthcare professional. There is video chatting equipment provided by telehealth, that allows for physicians to exam patients in the comfort of their own home. The video chatting can be done on a personal device like a computer with a webcam or a smartphone that has video chat. The second system is a store and forward method called asynchronous. This would allow to save information like medical images, or voice recordings and send them to the physician for them to asses at their convenience.
This type of doctor to patient convenience is still very controversial in the United States, but there are a few states that have embraced this type of medicine. The graph below shows what states have embraced this type of technology and which have not. This type of technology is expensive, but could cut back on emergency room waiting times and help people who cannot reach a doctor easily. Studies show that 80% of patients who got to the ER are going because of the lack of primary care in their area. The cost of an ER visit can go up to $8,000 compared to a primary care which is up to $200. Having telemedicine could bring the cost down to at least 40$. The graph below shows the difference between the cost before and after telemedicine. Having telemedicine helps bring down the amount of times for people to go to the ER for non emergency treatments.
This graph shows which states have reimburse telehealth services and which doesn’t. It shows that not many states reimburse the cost of it, this is because healthcare companies do not understand the importance of Telemedicine.
This graph shows how much money was saved while using telemedicine. It was used as a test to see if telemedicine can cut down the cost of healthcare. The impatient cost was cut down almost half a million and outpatient costs was also was cut down almost a half. This shows what would happen if Telemedicine would be used more instead of going to the ER. The cost goes down, for both the patient and the hospital.
Audience’s Comments and Concerns
After the presentation attached to this white paper, many questions arose from the audience regarding the implementation and legal aspects that will have to be accounted for. One would be the expansion of the product overseas to third world countries that also are in need of medical care. There exists no answer other than that it is in development and must be distributed domestically before it can be utilized internationally. When healthcare companies and physicians understand the importance of Telemedicine, they would want to use it more and improve the use of it. After that, then Telemedicine can be used in other parts of the world. A concern that the audience brought up were the legal and safety issues that could occur from sending personal, medical information over unsecured lines. Current medical establishments exchange medical records daily amongst each other and it is very rare for anyone to steal information during the transference. This would also apply to Telemedicine after implementation due to legality requirements. Another concern was the limitation of what telemedicine can do. Patients would have to go in a doctor's office to give samples like blood, but Telemedicine limits the amount of times the patients has to go in. The patient can go in and give a sample of their blood, and then the physician can use Telemedicine to contact the patient with the results.
Conclusion
Telemedicine can change healthcare for the good for everyone, for urban and rural areas. It helps patients connect to their doctors in their own home and not have to travel as far or wait in a waiting room in their physician's office. This service can save a person from traveling for hours just for a regular check up when they can do it right in their own home. Patients with serious illness can now talk to a specialist from a different part of the country so they can get the best treatment. It is known to be more cheaper than going to ER visits. With Telemedicine expanding it can help patients all over the world, even in third world countries. It can save countless lives and makes it easier for patient to contact their doctors at their own convenience. Telemedicine is the future of healthcare.
Work Cited
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