Telehealth – The Upscale Health IT Needed

Some called it a hoax, and some thought it would never suffice for real-time care – however, medicare telehealth emerged like a knight in shining armor in the face of adversity that the healthcare industry struggled to deal with.

Back in March, when WHO declared COVID 19 as a pandemic with 1.15 lakh people infected worldwide and a death toll of 4000, nobody realized it would turn out to be so devastating. With time, as the counts rose groundlessly, minimizing touchpoints were adopted as a preventive measure to avoid the spread of coronavirus. Eventually, global borders closed off, and staying indoors became the new normal. The healthcare industry grappled with a dual-threat – a massive influx of patients requiring intensive care and their personal safety from the infection.

As they say, extreme times require equally extreme measures; the global pandemic appeared as a catalyst to point out the fact that global healthcare needed IT upscaling. As per insights, while WHO maintains that the ideal doctor–patient ratio is 1:1000, a report from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) had predicted in 2019 that the US alone would be facing a shortage of nearly 122,000 physicians approximately by 2032. It is now in the hands of healthcare infrastructures to struggle like they are or accept the welcome changes that Health IT offers.

What is Telehealth?

Telehealth technology uses modern telecommunication equipment to administer healthcare consultation virtually, in layman's terms. It enables long-distance care, remote patient monitoring, and managing every patient’s data.

Cost and Time Effective

Healthcare: Healthcare centers, clinics, and hospitals incur substantial operational costs in building frameworks for visiting patients. Digitizing these procedures would cut down the price by billions in a year.

A data bank: Digitization of a process means generating an enormous amount of data and processing it on the cloud. A secure telehealth system protects patients' data and builds a colossal e-bank for future references. The ‘most preferred’ for investors: a recent survey by Fortune Business Insights revealed that the global market size for telehealth which was at USD 49.8 Billion in 2018, which can be expected to scale up to USD 266.8 Billion by 2026. We will definitely witness an enormous boom for the Telehealth trajectory in the future.

Benefits of Telehealth for Patients and Doctors

Telehealth has helped to reimagine the doctor visit without the part of traveling. It could only be possible with the benefits of telehealth. The boost of telehealth emerged with the outbreak of COVID-19, in both the sections – primary care and specialist. These days, a doctor visit no longer necessitates overbearing costs but minimal subscription fees. There are numerous benefits to telehealth operations. A few of them are listed below:

1. Business model upgradation

Specialists can launch their own personalised telehealth platform for the potential consumers by offering them required online assistance. This new model of clinical businesses has taken a whole new paradigm in upgrading the healthcare based services.

2. Increase in patient engagement

With the help of telehealth, the increase in the role of consumerism has led the doctors and specialists to focus on new ways of communication. The healthcare departments now assist patients on how to take care of themselves until clinical visits are required. Due to the current condition of the global pandemic, usage of custom healthcare software development and telehealth services has appeared as a boon for medical providers and helped in cost-cutting for both healthcare entities and consumers.

3. Expand in access

With the increase in shortage of physicians, telehealth can fill the gap. It is stretched in varied ways to provide healthcare facilities. It can not only reach the urban areas but also rural and remote areas where there is a sound internet facility available. The best example for this can be Software as a Medical Device that can facilitate doctors to check and monitor crucial vitals of patients such as heart rate and BP.

4. Improvement in management

The new format of the healthcare system increases the flow of efficiency. It can serve as a one-point solution for – care delivery, storing data, communicating, monitoring health reports. By putting everything on one platform, it helps the specialists to make quick medical decisions.

5. Revenue structure

The telehealth structure has indeed reduced the cost per head in less time. In addition to that, the new model has allowed doctors to extend their bills as per the time consumed. It can be anticipated that there is an enormous scope of digital transformation and upscaling in this digital healthcare segment in the near future.

6. Low-cost applications

SaaS healthcare applications are different from expensive hospital systems. A telehealth visit costs way lesser than the traditional way. The average cost difference between telehealth services and on-site visits is more than half.

7. Improvement in healthcare quality

The digital healthcare system has remarkably improved in the rural areas as technology aided in service delivery and cut down the unnecessary on-site visit.

8. Reaching patient satisfaction

Patient satisfaction indicates the performance of telehealth. The rise of telehealth provider gives the idea that this new healthcare model has acquired excellent customer satisfaction.

Telehealth for rural providers?

Rural healthcare providers connect with larger centers to serve their patients. Telehealth technology includes wireless communications, video conferencing, remote clinical and non-clinical services, clinician training, meetings, and a lot more. The connectivity with rural areas with health care apps aids the patients to get the right amount of care without traveling to distant sites. Telehealth plays an important role these days when maximum cities are under curfew. For instance, imagine a person living in a rural area who requires a heart specialist, and there is none in his neighborhood. With telehealth’s assistance, rural healthcare providers can leverage their telecommunication to help the patient with the required specialist without having to ask him to visit one.

Telemedicine vs. Telehealth: What’s the Difference?

Both the terms telemedicine and telehealth are often interchangeably used. But, when it comes to telemedicine vs telehealth, there are distinctions.

Telehealth

Telehealth encompasses more prominent aspects of technologies related to healthcare. It has improved the entire healthcare delivery system to treat patients with utter care. It is said to be different than telemedicine because it can be referred to as remote non-clinical services. According to WHO, telehealth cover – “Surveillance, health promotion and public health functions.”

Telemedicine

To continue with telemedicine meaning, it is a subdivision of healthcare IT services. It refers to the usage of electronic communications and software to provide utmost care and services to the patients to not have to visit on site.

In summation, Telemedicine app development services fall under telehealth, but not telehealth facilities fall under telemedicine.

Future of Health IT-Connected Care

Engagement is the Key: The current scenario of the world demands a robust upscale in the Health IT sector. Nevertheless, given that healthcare is such a sensitive aspect, communicating with the patients round the clock should be the primary focus in bridging the gap. Basically, to screen and ensure to treat the patients like they would be assisted in the personal touch of a doctor. Targeting telehealth solutions through mobile telehealth app seems to be the only way patients can stay connected. A few act like - words of encouragement to continue the treatment, on-time updates on alternative diagnosis, reminders about necessary healthcare routine, ease of booking further appointments through an application can make a patient more connected to the virtual set up than the traditional on-site visit.

Remote Monitoring Set-Ups are the way forward: To reduce pressure on healthcare personnel, remote screening of outdoor patients through IoT is necessary. Monitoring devices need to be equipped with end-point data capture devices. These devices would be connected to wearables or industrial machinery. The sensors on the device would be capturing and processing data in real-time; the framework should be able to store the signals along with the patients' history to provide the doctor or specialist a clear direction for the diagnosis.

Storing and Forwarding builds the base: There are various kinds of photographic records that are crucial to diagnosis and need to be distributed across the healthcare department to record a patient's medical history. For example - E-prescriptions, digital imaging like X-Rays, CT scans, MRIs, etc. The data from wearables and industrial monitoring devices, drug incompatibility reports, billing data, and even the patient’s insurance details are condensed through Electronic Health Record (EHRs) and Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) which create the backbone of Telehealth solutions.

User experience through video calls or conferences: For telehealth setup, e-conferencing is the single way to build the doctor-patient relationship. A robust portal that allows video conferencing with a proper sound experience and great picture quality helps to ensure that the virtual connection overpowers the traditional healthcare services. To make virtual screenings as informative as physical visits, functionalities like data sharing, recording of the procedure for future reference, and support for medical devices are enabled.

HIPAA guidelines show the way: A complete adherence to HIPAA guidelines ensures that the system well guards the patient’s data. The electronic healthcare transactions are padlocked to security by a set of technical guidelines and enable safe electronic access to the data in adherence to the privacy regulations set by HHS. Powered by a unique 10-digit National Provider Identifier code, all EDIs (Electronic Data Interchanges) are made per HIPAA guidelines.

Roadblocks in the path

Mental Blocks to accept digitization: No matter how counterrevolutionary it sounds, but a healthy percentage of the world’s population still abstains from accepting the digital maneuvers. While cheap data services and plugins of smart digital devices have bridged the gap to an extent but that is essentially limited to a generation. A decent section of the elderly population struggles with the use of basic instant messaging apps. Getting them around to using telehealth solutions will prove to be a challenge.

Confidentiality of data: Many nations, including the US, have strict guidelines for maintaining secrecy about the diagnostic history of patients. Digitization of telehealth meaning is that there’s ample scope for data theft and breach of confidentiality. Though most medical centers are still offering remote healthcare through video conferencing and instant messaging apps, but, can be justly estimated that a patient’s diagnostic history is not in very secure hands. That’s where the HIPAA guidelines come into play!

Inability to deal with data influx: Existing telehealth services weren’t prepared for this boom and are literally struggling to cope with the surge in usage. Most are staggering because of the lack of a digital solution that can handle the sudden boom along with the data confidentiality concerns.

In Summation:

Digitization of a trajectory like a healthcare business isn’t easy. From diagnosis to administering drugs, digital imaging, and remote monitoring systems, virtual paperwork fed into a system requires a transparent and sound technological approach. You can only trust the best to do that!

Radixweb has been running successful digital revolutions for the past 25 years. Our healthcare software solutions are futuristic and proficient enough to upscale the level of digitization your telehealth companies looking to acquire through Healthcare Software Development.