Abstract
Using telemedicine systems, physicians around the world have been able to provide health access to their own communities and others abroad. Telemedicine is still a developing field in the health sciences, but much progress has been made with the advent of new communication technologies. Today, telemedicine offers an alternative to traditional physician consultations, especially for those patients with different needs. Patients with mobility issues, low socioeconomic standing, and far away from big cities have seen benefits from this form of patient care. Not only has telemedicine been able to just bridge these gaps, but it has also provided a new way for the international community of health practitioners to cooperate and aid areas in need of specialized care in the developing world. New cooperation programs between developed and developing countries have been developed to bring specialist knowledge to areas that otherwise would not have access to it. Telemedicine is a way to take care of patients in this technological area and perhaps will become the new standard of care.
TopBackground
First referred to as Telegnosis, telemedicine has evolved through the years, since its origins as a simple method of remote consultation and physical examination used for the transmission of heart sounds, plain radiologic images, and other simple studies.
The first record of telehealth is dated from 1948 where radiological images were sent via telephone. This event demonstrated to the medical community how useful using communication devices allowed accelerating the transfer process of health data (Teledochealth, 2021).
The evolution of telehealth can be divided into four major stages: delivery diagnosis, clinical service, and integration into healthcare. Healthcare delivery started with in house visits and later expanded unto in office visits to the doctor. Now, with the capacity of electronic history charts and the internet, it is possible to share a universal medical history per patient with attached files as images or PDF files (Martin-Khan et al., 2017).
Telehealth as teleconsult is an opportunity to improve clinical care and ensure both patient and provider safety. In 1960, the department of Psychiatry in Nebraska, US used a closed-circuit TV for consultations. By broadcasting live on television psychiatrists could interact with their patients overcoming distance (Teledochealth, 2021). Teleconsult overcoming distance barriers became available to remote communities by projects managed by NASA, such as the Space Technology Applied to Rural Papago Advanced Health Care (STARPHAC) (Shirzadfar, 2017).
Telehealth made a huge step when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) started playing a big role towards its development, by creating programs that began with project Mercury during the 60’s and continued with NASA’s Applications Technology Satellite (ATS-1), which allowed the utilization of satellite communication to provide healthcare access between remote small rural communities and larger hospitals (Nesbitt & Katz-Bell, 2018).
Telehealth enabled remote diagnosis in various clinical fields, being introduced in radiology, laboratory, and pathology and subsequent elaboration of care plans for people over larger distances, as technology continues to progress new equipment and services become readily available for both clinicians and patients having a more complex level of connectivity and information processing capabilities.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Multidisciplinary Teams: Group of multiple specialists and other non-MD health providers who work together to meet the needs of patients, especially those with complex conditions.
Diagnostics: Determination of a condition through the careful examination around it.
Telehealth: Use of telecommunication technologies in health practices.
Internet of Things: Network of objects actively connected to each other and the internet.
Rural Medicine: Study of the delivery of healthcare to rural areas.
Expert Consult: Medical advice and services offered by specialist in an area.
Patient Care: Act of providing services around health practices to those who need it.
Health Monitoring: The monitoring of specific parameters to determine changes in health and overall wellbeing in someone.