Telehealth, alias video conferencing applied to medicine, enables doctors to reach the patients that are dispersed on a wide territory at acceptable costs. In this way, it becomes possible to provide efficient health care services to rural communitie, despite ofthe funding cuts on hospitals
Imagine a scenario when a hospital with shrinking financial resources has to take care of a population widely dispersed on the territory and with a high percentage of children with heart diseases. In the past, this meant to spend a lot of time and money on promptly dispatching ambulances, doctors and health personnel kilometers away to rescue someone that was about to die in a remote farm or hut; today, telehealth makes everything simpler and – last but not least – less expensive. In fact, in a world where babies learn first to use a tablet, than to walk, the application of video Conferencing to healthcare can really make miracles.
In the given example, the necessary ongoing monitoring of the young patients with heart diseases has been made through Telehealth, anything else then a system of video conferencing. A video conference can be also helpful to alert the doctor when a Patient shows worrying symptoms. In this way, the doctors working for the local hospital can take a close eye even on distant patients, without any need to physically bring them to a medical facility, and – the main important point – with substantial money saving.
Health diseases are not the only ones that can be managed through telehealth. Telemedicine schemes can be applied to a wide set of illnesses, as the power of modern video conferencing technology enables doctors to recognize symptoms even through a video conference.
More, this technology has been proved to be really effective on promoting cooperation among doctors and hospitals. Video conferencing solutions like, for example, R-Hub`s TurboMeeting (http://www.rhubcom.com), enable health-personnel to exchange important information like scans, exams, and medical records in a video conference without any impairment of the privacy of the patients or any risk of data leaking. This aspect is particularly relevant, as in many countries the Law wants patient information to be kept confidential and health personnel are responsible for that.
Does telemedicine really work? According to many doctors’ opinions, yes, it does. It has certainly helped to save lives because video-conferencing allowed rapid action that couldn’t have been possible without. This is another reason to adopt this technology, apart from the usual financial considerations.
However, budget is important. According to a research published by the blog “Fierce Healthcare”, through telemedicine patients are able to save about 50$ in travel costs per visit and hospitals 25$. Then, it should be added the savings in terms of fewer days of hospitalization. In a world of decreasing financial resources for healthcare, video conferencing could thus become a strategic asset for any health facilities: Consider that only in the US cuts in health care are over 1.8 trillion dollars in 2018 (source:https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/26/16526458/2018-senate-budget-explained) , and Europe is going to follow soon.
