The future of telemedicine in America is rapidly improving through
the advancements of mobile and wireless technology. Some popular
telemedicine innovations include: interactive self-assessment tools;
education Web sites; monitors that send readings right into patient
medical records; and devices that let X-rays and other medical
images be viewed from anywhere, nationally as well as
internationally.
The medical world has embraced the age of Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity)
with great enthusiasm because it not only provides greater
quality-of-care for patients and their families, but it also offers
a better and quicker way for information and education to
continually reach out to healthcare professionals no matter their
location.
In the not-too-distant-now, a typical hospital visit will not only
feature the usual patient registration through a laptop computer,
but will also include the use of a handheld PDA (personal digital
assistant) or a WLAN (Wireless Location-Area Network) by a nurse or
hospital administrator who will be able to use it to double-check or
complete a patient’s history and physical at their bedside or while
in the waiting room. While in the hospital, a patient will then be
connected to wireless sensors that will monitor body functions
through the hospital’s computerized network. The data collected can
be accessed by doctors who are at the same hospital, at another
hospital or clinic, or at home. The doctor(s) can then respond
through their own PDA and order the necessary tests and X-rays, or
investigate drug types and interactions, and then e-prescribe the
proper medications, all without having to physically leave their
home or office. X-rays can be sent via wireless transmission to the
radiology department and viewed from a computer screen. In the
surgical suites, every item is bar-coded and scanned upon use,
helping to keep accurate and precise inventory of all surgical
instruments, with new items being immediately ordered to replace
what has just been used. Upon discharge from the hospital, patients
can expect to be followed at home with the use of wireless sensors
and monitors that will transmit data back to the hospital.
Telemedicine helps to improve the quality of a doctor’s professional
work, along with improving their efficiency in handling the usual,
endless paper trail associated with the demands of hospital
administration and insurance companies. Other benefits of wireless
medicine include:
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Healthcare that’s faster and safer. The information available
over wireless networks for the doctor on-call can help them make
better-informed decisions when paged by a patient or by a family
caregiver, or when handling referrals from other healthcare
workers like nurses or home healthcare aides.
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Improved billing practices. Everything done for the patient is
immediately recorded and captured by a hospital or office
computer network upon entry by the attending healthcare
professionals. The risk of fraudulent billing also decreases,
and billing departments are able to electronically submit
charges directly to insurance companies, speeding up the entire
process. A decrease in medical errors will help create increases
in cost-saving.
-
A
decrease in the amount of “down” or “wait” time for healthcare
professionals and patients. PDAs that have a
Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) feature enables people to
make telephone calls using a computer network, over a data
network like the Internet. VoIP converts the voice signal from a
telephone into a digital signal that travels over the internet,
and then converts it back at the other end so that a person can
speak to anyone with a regular phone number. This type of
technology will reduce the amount of “wait” time between a
nurse-to-physician or physician-to-physician communication from
20 minutes to only one minute.
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Doctors are able to obtain quicker answers to questions by
accessing medical information from multiple locations using
their PDAs. They can also obtain drug information and submit
prescriptions electronically to pharmacies for fulfillment.
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Healthcare professionals can perform dictation and
record-keeping tasks away from the office by using their PDAs.
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Utilizing wireless cellular networks and a range of client
devices, EMTs can transmit patient data to hospitals while en
route in ambulances.
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ER doctors can view patient information on an electronic white
board delivered straight from back-end systems to their PDAs
over wireless networks.
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Through wireless networks, hospital staff can manage operating
room schedules and access new patient information.
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Healthcare workers in the field can access a full-range of
patient and medical information using mobile client devices.
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Participants in clinical trials can access protocols, drug data,
checklists, and patient diaries from various locations via their
mobile handheld devices.
While handheld devices are the present and future of medicine, it is
actually the software being created and implemented which will
ultimately provide the answers needed for the continued improvement
and accuracy of healthcare. PDAs and WLANs are extending past the
individual doctor and going out into communities across the country
where mobile professionals will work collaboratively, transacting
and referring important medical data back and forth amongst
themselves. Computerized hardware and software have become the
connective tissues linking technology to modern medicine, creating a
medical revolution the likes of which haven’t been seen since such
rapid advancements were made during World Wars I and II. Other
areas of medicine, such as business and administrative applications,
are also improving because of technology with creations like
Electronic Medical Records (EMR), Clinical and Drug References,
Patient Management Systems (PMS), Patient Scheduling Systems, and
e-Prescription writers. It is the hope of patient and practitioner
alike that the revolutionary advancements will continue to give the
medical professional the luxury of more time … more time to
diagnose, more time to get to know the patient, more time to
accurately treat people, and more time to practice the best medicine
possible.
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