Imagine a world where no matter where you lived, you had the opportunity to receive a high-level of care. From doctors diagnosing your symptoms despite their physical presence, or choosing a medical specialist, regardless of where they live in the world. Maybe your friend highly recommends the laser eye surgeon she used last week that lives in Afghanistan, but you both live in Brazil. Perhaps you need to renew your medicine prescription but don’t want to wait in line again for 3 hours. Telehealth services, and the future of Telehealth services, may be the solution to that. But what exactly is Telehealth? And why does it matter?
Telehealth is a virtual service with the aim of delivering health service with the latest information and communications technology. Patients can schedule an appointment with their doctor from their phone, tablet, or laptop. Doctors can then join the patient at the appointed time, diagnose their symptoms and offer a solution. In its state, current Telehealth solutions only offer symptom diagnostics, but the future possibilities are nearly endless. Future applications of Telehealth solutions can integrate with remote surgeries and robotics to receive care from specialists across the world. It may seem like science fiction, but robot-assisted surgeries already exist today, performing tasks like small precise incisions that may be riskier for humans to do.
Telehealth’s greatest advantage is coverage and potential availability. Similar to the globalization of our world economy, patients in the future may no longer be geographically bound to receive care. Individuals that live in regions with minimal to no access to simple care procedures, like teeth cleaning, could live a higher quality of life. Telehealth solutions can also assist the elderly that lack mobility to travel, or Canadians affected by viral outbreaks that require self-isolation. Now, these individuals can receive hospital-level care from the comfort of their own home.
The opportunities present themselves, but the foundation for Telehealth services must be laid down first. In Canada, all provinces have a Telehealth service for citizens to diagnose their symptoms with a trained medical professional. Access eHealth Technologies is currently developing the next steps of Telehealth software, utilizing video conferencing and the ability for doctors to write e-prescriptions.
Patients who use Telehealth services in its current form already benefit from the value and impact it brings to our healthcare system. In fact, a study was performed in BC to determine the impact of virtual visits and whether patients see value in this technology. It was found that 79% of users agree or strongly agree that the quality of care they received from a virtual visit is the same as in-person. From the same study, patients have found the response to be overwhelmingly positive, with 91% of users indicating the impact of their most recent virtual visit to be very or somewhat helpful. The study asked the respondents for the main reason for choosing an online visit. 30% of respondents said that it would save time and effort and 29%, patients claimed it was faster to get an online appointment with a doctor than in-person.
While the reduction in patient wait times is a significant benefit in and of itself, Telehealth also offers significant time savings from an economic perspective. A study commissioned by Canada Health Infoway has found that Telehealth solutions result in health system cost avoidance of approximately $55 million in 2010 with greater savings expected to increase as efficiencies improve.
Sophisticated Telehealth solutions are rapidly growing in value to Canadians and our healthcare system. Even though Canadians benefit from its use now, there’s still so much more that can be done. With Telehealth solutions, Canadians can expect a high standard for medical care in the future, no matter where they live in the country.
Access eHealth is committed to developing health informatics software solutions for Canada’s most vulnerable and fastest-growing generation. With recent medical concerns and prominence of self-containment, we realize it is becoming increasingly important for us to accelerate the development of our Telehealth service module.
Are you interested in hearing more? Access eHealth Technologies has developed 2 products to improve the health care our elderly receive, AccessEMR HomeCare and AccessEMR Nursing Home. Our aim is to offer the Right Care to the Right Patient at the Right Time.