Telemedicine

Medical monitoring, particularly in combination with telemedicine, is one of the key tools being used to improve health prospects for patients diagnosed with one or more chronic diseases, including congestive heart failure and diabetes, as well as for individuals recovering from heart-related surgeries. Medical monitoring devices appear in a number of forms, including scales, wrist-bands or watches, gloves, shirts, cuffs, etc. These devices collect biomedical information about the individual, and typically using broadband connections, transmit the data to a central server where a healthcare professional can review these measurements and determine whether some type of intervention or further diagnostic visit is required.

These monitoring systems are integrated into a telemedicine environment where physicians can remotely review metrics for numerous patients in an efficient manner. This improves the frequency with which a patient’s progress is reviewed by a physician or other provider, without requiring the individual to travel out of their home environment, nor even for the physician to visit a specific office location. For patients who live at a great distance from their specialist provider, or who may have difficulty in traveling for other reasons, these systems have a particular importance. Further, the costs associated with frequent physician office visits are dramatically reduced.

Beyond ongoing monitoring, telemedicine solutions may include electronic health record (EHR) repositories. Numerous subscription-based services have emerged wherein one’s recent and key health information is maintained, with access allowed to authorized individuals/health professionals. In a mobile society, providing access to such information for individuals with complex combination of conditions or medications may be crucial to ensuring accurate diagnosis by healthcare providers who would otherwise not be familiar with the history. Some services are available that provide for telephone-based access to key health information, but these sorts of offerings are likely to give way to Internet-based options, or to health records carried on one’s person at all times. Offerings for on-board EHRs, include both non-invasive (wrist-bands) to highly-invasive (embedded RFIP chip) options. Uptake of the use of EHRs will largely rest upon concerns about data security and privacy, cost and reimbursement, and ultimately, reaching the tipping point wherein healthcare providers simply find that it makes logistical sense to convert to an electronic health record for all their patients.