By Jennifer Bradley, Staff Writer
As caregivers, staying
up on the technological trends is vital to
providing our loved ones with the best care
possible. Telemedicine, or treating people from
a distance, is not a new concept in health care.
Since the beginning of the last century,
Australians in remote areas used two-way radios
to communicate with the Royal Flying Doctor
Service. Even in Africa, smoke signals have
served as a warning to people of a disease
outbreak in a village.
In the United States, a shortage of doctors was
addressed in 1954 with the "teledoctor," when
the patient dialed for an appointment, then came
to the doctor’s office. This replaced the house
call model. The current telemedicine trend,
however, began with a different population set,
when Texas prisons began to overflow in the late
1990s. Physicians were overwhelmed with the
number of patients, and finding time to meet
with each of them.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ)
was also searching for a way to cut prisoner
health care costs and save taxpayer dollars. In
collaboration with the University of Texas
Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB), the TDCJ
instituted a telemedicine program, using video
conferencing as a means of treating the prison
population. With the success of the TDCJ’s
initiative, UTMB established care clinics for
treating uninsured as well as corporate-based
patients.
Today, telemedicine has moved
into a yet another era. The practice comes in a
variety of models, and displays distinct,
measurable goals, from increasing a patient’s
independence to lessening the cost of health
care.
Definitions
First, it’s necessary to
understand the difference between telehealth and
telemedicine. These words appear in a variety of
ways. The Association of Telehealth Service
Providers defines the terms this way, explaining
that telehealth is a broader term which
encompasses telemedicine:
Telehealth: the electronic provision of health
care and information services for the direct
benefit of individual patients and their
families. It includes actual physician-patient
interactions via telemedicine, and the provision
of education and information services designed
to increase awareness of (and where applicable,
compliance with) diagnoses and medical
conditions, treatments, and good health
practices.
Telemedicine: The provision of health care and
education over a distance, using
telecommunications technology.
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