Telehealth/Telemedicine

Here is a target industry your area should be exploring: Telehealth/Telemedicine.

What is it?

Very simply, telehealth is the delivery of health care from a distance. Modern technology has made it possible for patients to receive health care in many different ways. Technologies such as telephones, email, computers, interactive video, digital imaging, and health care monitoring devices, make it possible for clinicians to monitor, diagnose and treat patients without having to physically be with them. Telehealth is a broad term that covers any type of health care that is delivered remotely. Surfing the Internet for information about cancer, telephoning a nurse hotline, emailing a physician, sending data from a heart monitor via the telephone to a cardiologist--all of these things are applications of telehealth.

Telemedicine is a subset of telehealth. It includes many medical subspecialties, such as telepediatrics, telepsychiatry, teleradiology and telecardiology. Specialities such as telepediatrics and telepsychiatry are practiced by using live videoconferencing systems. A pediatric or psychiatry visit would be conducted exactly the same as if the patient and provider were in the same room, but the videoconferencing units allow them to be thousands of miles apart. Specialties such as teleradiology and telecardiology make use of "store and forward" technologies. Digital photos, x-rays, electrocardiograms, and other data are transmitted from one location to another and stored on a computer. A radiologist or cardiologist then retrieves the data from the computer and analyzes it in the same way that they would if the patient were sitting in the next room.

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