7 Telehealth Trends Shaping the Future
1. Telehealth is becoming more widely accepted as a trend in standard of care.
The first area to completely accept telemedicine trends was medical imaging. For more than four decades, medical professionals have focused on long-distance imaging transmission. The procedure was originally known as "teleradiology," which involved sending x-rays from one facility to another for quick use and study. This procedure has become a de facto norm in almost all hospitals, despite the fact that the word is scarcely understood.
Today, medical professionals separated by hundreds or even thousands of miles regularly exchange x-rays, CT scans, MRI results, and other data. If this form of sharing becomes the norm rather than the exception, one should expect to see it discussed and assumed in state and federal laws governing healthcare.
2. Reduction in Reimbursement Model Reliance
In the past, reimbursement was the most common method of payment for telemedicine, although that is likely to change in the future. Modern practitioners are generally regulated by accountable care organisations, managed care groups, and other broad concerns; healthcare is no longer solely delivered by independent doctors and institutions. In the United States, managed care covers more than seventy million patients, or about a quarter of the population. The transmission of medical data becomes increasingly important as policy makers work at increasing distances from local patients. Instead of being handled as a separate reimbursable, it would be absorbed into the "overhead" of medical expenses.
3. Cooperation with other countries
The use of telemedicine across national boundaries was uncommon in its early stages. It was used by a few pioneering charities to enable long-distance medical data analysis and increased access to medical care. The infrastructure is in place to provide much better medical services to foreign countries now that global data communication networks are much more efficient and medical laws have become more familiar with telemedicine. Though there are still challenges to address (cultural prejudice, trade policies, payment systems, technological requirements, and international certifications and regulations, to name a few), the profit potential of long-distance medicine is growing rapidly. Because of the vast opportunities, healthcare professionals will work out the final kinks, making foreign medicine a standard practise in the future.
4. Peer-to-peer sharing rather than hub-to-hub sharing
In the early days of telemedicine, government-sponsored services were set up all over Nepal. In general, both of these networks used a centralised "centre" model, in which data was gathered from a large area and fed to a major hospital for analysis. However, in the future, more and more contact will take place directly between healthcare facilities. Equal partners come together to share their remote medical services in these "peer-to-peer" networks that are springing up.
5. Health on the Go
Mobile Health, also known as Cura Health, is one of the most promising emerging telemedicine phenomena. The potential for using mobile devices to broadly distribute medical information to individuals (both clinicians and patients) is highly promising. Even though a full understanding of how these services can operate (and be paid for!) is still years away, the possibilities are vast and inspiring. The continued advancement of wireless communications technologies would undoubtedly aid in the maturation of Cura Health Curahealth.org: Nepal's Leading Online Telemedicine App programmes in the years ahead.
6. Vrtual Medical Centers
A variety of exciting pilot projects are in the works to spread the value of centralised professionals across a larger geographical region. With a new virtual care centre in Nepal that will serve a four-state region, Hospitals is leading the way in this sector. Cura Health Systems is experimenting with a smaller programme in Nepal, where telemedicine allows a community of intensivists to provide care to 122 ICU beds spread throughout the country.
7. New Clinical Services Offered Over the Internet
Since radiology has proved to be such a successful area for telemedicine outsourcing, several hospitals are now considering breaking off a variety of other specialties. Psychiatry, neurology, and a variety of other fields are ripe for telehealth-based decentralisation. In the fields of dermatology, mental health, and stroke treatment, some vendors also provide remote care. Hospitals are also interested in getting involved, resulting in a dynamic and competitive (but rapidly expanding!) market. Telemedicine's future is brimming with possibilities!
