Travel expenses make frequent hospital visits costly, especially in rural areas where it is difficult and expensive to travel to access better healthcare facilities. Technology has connected the world with everything a person would want. In healthcare, physicians and researchers have linked medicine and technology. In today’s world, a person can easily find out their symptoms, conditions, and everything they need to know about a disease. We can get everything on our doorsteps, whether it is medicine or any other medical supplement. Still, we need to go to the clinics and hospitals to see physicians and consult with them. But telemedicine has been changing this scenario and is the next big thing in healthcare. It has transformed the healthcare sector to a whole other level
In this blog, we will take a look at exactly what telemedicine is. What are the benefits of telemedicine, and where is the future taking telemedicine’s growth?
Intriguingly, telemedicine services through video conferencing or other virtual technologies helped reduce the frequency of doctor visits. The use of telemedicine reduces treatment costs and saves both patients and physicians time which changed the whole healthcare scenario.
In the late 1950s, one of the first hospital-based telemedicine systems was used. Nebraska Psychiatric Institute and Norfolk State Hospital set up a television-based closed-circuit link for psychiatric consultations.1 Since then, the telemedicine industry has been growing tremendously.
People sometimes confuse telehealth with telemedicine. But it is not exactly the same. In telemedicine, technologies and information in clinical services are used to enhance people’s accessibility to healthcare, increasing and improving patient outcomes.
However, in addition to clinical services, telehealth refers to distant non-clinical services such as provider training, official meetings, and continuing medical education (CME). 2
In short; telemedicine is a part of telehealth but doesn’t describe the whole telehealth category. The diagram below will depict more clearly the parts of telehealth.
The use of telemedicine can also be conducted in three different modes: by remote monitoring, by store-and-forward, and by real-time interactive sessions. All three of them play a beneficial role in healthcare, imparting benefits to both patients and healthcare providers.
First and foremost, store-and-forward mode is mostly used in the dermatology, pathology, and radiology fields of medicine. This facilitates the reduction in outpatient visits to hospitals to consult with the doctor. A patient can easily transfer the medical information (images and biosignals) to the doctor for consultation.
Furthermore, remote monitoring refers to self-monitoring, which includes various medical devices to monitor the patient’s health. It is helpful in chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and asthma. It allows more frequent patient health monitoring and satisfaction.
In the case of the real-time interaction type, online video conferencing, audio calls, and home visits are included for patient care. These kinds of interactive services help provide immediate attention and medical advice to patients.
This type of face-to-face interaction is frequently used in fields like teleneuropsychology (neuropsychological consultations for cognitive disorders in patients), telenursing (monitor symptoms, diagnosis, and health conditions), telepharmacy (pharmaceuticals or drug advice to the patient), and telerehabiliation (provides clinical assessment and therapy for rehabilitation patients).3
In recent years, telemedicine has seen rapid growth. But the swift surge in its use was seen during COVID-19, but access to telemedicine or telehealth was not equal in every region of the world. According to a brief report presented by the Assistant Secretary for planning and evolution (ASPE) office of health policy, usage of rate of telemedicine was similar in most of the demographic, 21.1- 26.8%. However, these rates were lower among young adults aged 18-24 (17.6%) and people without health insurance (9.4%).
Moreover, disparities among subgroups were seen, which include Medicare (27.4%), black individuals (26.8%), and Medicaid (29.3%), people who have income <$25,000 (26.7 %). This data also included the people who utilized video telehealth from different groups, including Asian, Black individuals, Latino, etc. The complete data is shown in the graph below.4
The future of this technology is expected to grow more than in the last few years. According to a Statista report on the global telemedicine market (2019-2030), the overall spending in 2019 on
telemedicine was the US $45.5. Since then, the market has been growing tremendously. It is expected to grow up to the US $459.8% in the year 2030 as shown in the graph below.5
Telemedicine has more than a hundred reasons to be used. Considering the long list, we will go over a few of them in this blog.
Our discussion of telemedicine has now come to an end. Healthcare can be accessed and delivered more efficiently through telemedicine, which ensures that the healthcare system is able to cope with its challenges efficiently. In simpler terms, its accessibility, affordability, and convenient approach will provide high-quality treatment access to patients at their fingertips.
Reviewer: Manisha
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