Telemedicine, which enables health professionals to provide treatment to patients remotely, is especially useful in rural areas, where people are distanced from healthcare facilities. It can also play a considerable role during natural disasters when professionals cannot reach affected areas or must operate outside of traditional medical settings.
But because of the nature of the platform — and the technology used — telemedicine is susceptible to outside attacks, particularly cyberattacks. Communication and digital exchanges are often done via the open internet. A patient will have a live video chat with a health professional via a mobile app, for instance. That feed and any data from the exchange is vulnerable to snooping or outright theft, especially if one of the parties is using an unsecured network connection.
Although some stigma and shame still surround such illnesses as depression, anxiety, OCD, and bipolar disorder, people are beginning to feel more comfortable about sharing their own struggles and finding support from others online. Telehealth and an interconnected world are coming together to end stigma, and help people manage their mental health in a more effective way.
Since then, I have focused on enabling the provision of healthcare services to patients who choose to live in the beauty of a rural environment. Using telehealth technology to rapidly view, assess and improve a patient's situation has been foremost in my program of research.
I know I do not have to describe the explosion of telehealth during the last 15 years to readers of this blog. In my telehealth experience, I have gone from home hospice organizations, thinking that I was suggesting a cold and unfeeling method of providing end-of-life care, to a Global University interest in me sharing my telehealth expertise as an international Fulbright Specialist.
For medical students with the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson, weeks of suspense will end on March 15. Otherwise known as Match Day, it's the day the students will learn where they will go for their residency training, in their chosen medical field, after they graduate from medical school in May.
After four challenging years as a medical student – while maintaining her roles as a wife and mother of five daughters – Mary Alyson Smith will graduate from the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson, in May. She has decided to pursue a career in pathology, and is especially interested in telepathology, "I feel it's an area that still has great potential for growth," she says.
But there's more to Mary's medical training. In addition to the usual four years of study, Mary applied and was one of 26 students accepted to the UA College of Medicine's Rural Health Professions Program (RHPP), designed to broaden students' knowledge of healthcare delivery by matching them with physician preceptors working in small towns, including Indian Health Service sites, throughout Arizona.
After your workflow model is altered – and it's an easy process if done properly -- you can integrate it slowly into your daily practice. This will make this easier for you and your patients.
Is telemedicine "as good" as a face-to-face patient visit? Take a few cues from television and movie professionals to make sure!
In today's digital world, we've all become visual image connoisseurs. Part of what we respond to is technical and part is artistic. It's largely the "artistic" portion in which meaning and emotion are created.
As such, telemedicine professionals would be wise to pay attention to certain artistic aspects, when creating the telemedicine patient/provider encounter.
Beyond the 'good enough' technical aspects of the telemedicine encounter – available bandwidth, relatively clear and fluid video, and audio of an acceptable level – there is a higher-quality bar that we, as telemedicine professionals, must strive to reach, in order to be trusted and to overcome objections that our viewers might have. Often, these objections may even be subconscious on the viewer's part, but still come into play, and nothing is harder to resolve than an unconscious objection!