Telehealth: How it is helping patients to improve their health condition?

Telehealth & telemedicine are emerging concepts that use digital information and communication technologies like computers, mobile devices, teleconferencing and image sharing to support remote patient monitoring. The primary aim of making health digital apps is to facilitate patient’s access to medical services remotely and manage their wellbeing. Both doctors and patients use these apps to connect and communicate with each other. From sending text alerts to remind about appointments or data submission to send and receive linked information, doctor apps are helping and reshaping the traditional face of the medical industry.

telehealth

These apps enable clinicians to engage patients with their own illness management to achieve faster and better results after strengthening patient adherence with medication and other treatments.

How are these apps working?


Medical professionals sign and authorize a patient in the relevant program after that he started receiving regular information and reminders to take medication. Patients are also allowed to share the readings of blood pressure, weight, blood sugar and oxygen saturation. These values are monitored at regular intervals by a doctor. To avoid creating frustrations message and alerts are sent only when it is necessary. This promotes positive lifestyle transformations without getting bored. Doctor’s feedback helps patients to gauge their progress. In case their vitals are not showing any improvement and if they are not feeling well, they can schedule a visit to their doctor to revise their management plan.

What are the major healthcare areas these apps are being used? 


In addition to healthcare professionals, social care professionals are successfully using them in general practice, acute hospitals, community and mental well-being setups. In a typical general practice, patients use this system to manage several illness conditions like smoking cessation, asthma, hypertension and weight management.

How do patients feel about them?


As these digital apps facilitate patients to manage disease conditions conveniently, they feel more confident and supported. 24/7 connectivity with their doctor motivates them to follow all the instructions.  Especially patients dealing with long-term chronic illness feel more comfortable and guided after receiving prompt alert and messages throughout the treatment. 

How are they benefiting patients? 


•    As you can see healthcare is becoming specialized, instead of treating all diseases, hospitals have started offering specialized treatment and care for better outcomes. These apps are facilitating medical experts to connect with a maximum number of patients in geographically distant areas and give patients a better access to medical care facilities.

•    Implementation of digital technology in the healthcare industry has significantly reduced the cost of chronic disease management like diabetes and high blood pressure. Patients suffering from long-term illnesses often stressed out with a regular doctor visit. As these medical apps allow them to monitor their fitness conditions while staying at the home, they feel relaxed and don’t mind to use them to record their readings.

•    Mobile health has become the latest buzz word of the healthcare industry. It has become the best tool for the elderly health care. This system has the monitoring tools, which are capable to identify pre-defined problems. Moreover, 24/7 monitoring enable individuals to stay at home and reduces their overall expenses.

•    Use of apps also speed up the diagnosis of certain conditions, like skin diseases; instead of visiting doctor you can upload the picture of skin issue and send it to the doctor for diagnosis and treatment. Most of the private hospitals offer these services to improve diagnostic speeds.

How to improve the efficiency of telehealth?


No matter how efficiently an app is designed, efficiency primarily depends on the clinical management plan. This management plan specifies the purpose of using telehealth and explains what should be achieved and what a patient should do if things are not improving or getting worse. While making disease management plan, doctors should also consider the other circumstances like bad lifestyle habits and occupation of individual patients.

Endnote: 

Health apps are transforming medicine industry after increasing engagement between patients and doctors. Though it’s an emerging technology, telemonitoring of vital signs and health conditions have significantly decreased death rate. 
SHARE

About Basheer Ahmad

    Blogger Comment
    Facebook Comment

0 comments:

Post a Comment