Coronavirus has made life a bit hard, hard to earn and hard to spend but it is teaching us lot of good things too. Since coronavirus has extended it’s arms in India maximum hospitals and nursing homes either turned to coronavirus dedicated or closed. Government has allowed TeleMedicine in the health emergency that is currently affecting everyone.
what is telemedicine?
TeleMedicine or TeleHealth is a procedure which involve the diagnosis and treatment of patients through telecommunications technology. It is a subset of tele-health, which includes other types of technology-enabled care, such as promoting health and wellness, remote patient monitoring, provider-to-provider remote communication, and mobile health.
Types of TeleMedicine
There are essentially two types of telemedicine i.e AudioVisual & Text. The first involves real-time audiovisual encounters, also known as “synchronous telemedicine.” The patient can be on a laptop, tablet, or desktop computer that has a camera, or even on a smartphone with a camera or the real-time audiovisual encounter can take place in a physician’s office. This may be required by the payer or state regulation.
The second type of telemedicine is known as asynchronous, or “store-it-forward” or “Text” visits. In this case, encounters are not in real time and function like emails, where the response comes sometime after sending. Like emails, this can be more useful for busy patients and clinicians than a real-time session. In addition to text, asynchronous telemedicine may include lab results, images, videos, and medical records. It is commonly used in such specialties as dermatology, pathology, and radiology.
Benefits of TeleMedicine
Telemedicine shows great promise in improving patient care by helping patients make their appointments, adhere to doctors’ advice, and refill their prescriptions, to name a few benefits. If we list them in points , here they are
- No Lines / waiting time
- Schedule according to your own convenience.
- Zero percent (0%) risk of getting communicable disease from Hospital/Clinic.
- You Can reach your physician or general physician back without extra pay within limited time( as per tele-medicine providing company or doctor like 3days in practo, lybrate, whatsapp )
- Easy follow up
- Physical Visit to Doctor if he ask for physical examination only
- Sharing of Investigation Result / images/ videos & Medical record is easy.
- Save Time & Travel expenses to visit a doctor
- Privacy is maintained
- Improves quality of care delivery