Telehealth: Benefits and Limitations of Virtual Medical Services

Running head: TELEHEALTH
TELEHEALTH
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
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TELEHEALTH
Introduction:
Tele-health is seen to encompass a broad variety of technologies as well as tactics that
serves in delivering virtual medical, health as well as education services. It should not be
considered as the specific service but should mainly be considered as the collection of means
required for enhancing care as well as education delivery. The word telemedicine can be applied
to the traditional clinical diagnosis that gets delivered with the help of technology. Tele-health on
the other hand encompasses a wide range of diagnosis as well as management, education as well
as other related fields of healthcare. This technology mainly helps in facilitating the diagnosis,
consultation, treatment, care management, education as well as self-management while the
patient is at his own original site and the healthcare professional is at the distant site (Kruse et al.,
2017). Researchers are of the opinion that this form of technology mainly helps in the self-
management as well as caregiver support for the patients and it is also seen to include
synchronous interactions as well as asynchronous store and forward transfers (Kveder, Coye &
Everett, 2014). This assignment will be based on literature review about how this technology
associated itself with different negative and positive aspects and how different factors of their
technology is aiding in patient care in medical and infectious ward.
Researchers like Serper and volk (2018) have talked about an important service provided
by one of the medium of telehealth that had often been found to be extremely helpful in caring
and saving lives of patients under various stressful circumstances. The paper describes one of the
medium of telehealth in details that is called the live video technology. It can be described as the
two-way interaction medium between the healthcare provider and the service user that may the
patient himself, or the caregiver through the utilization of the audio-visual telecommunications
technology. The researchers had been seen to refer this mode of technology as the “real-time”

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technology and have spoken of the ways where it can be used as the substitute for an in-person
encounter when it is not available. Siddiqui et al. (2017) have stated that the service users had
often spoken about many of their experiences when this technology had acted as a life saving
technology. It can be used both for diagnostic as well as consultative treatment services. An
example can be provided in this situation how such services in the medication ward can help in
treatment of people in crucial situations. There might be incidence of hypoglycemia in diabetes
patients after they are discharged from medical ward when medications or insulin are taken more
than once mistakenly. This might have negative consequences on the health of the patient
resulting in threatening outcomes. In such situations, live video technology of telehealth would
become useful where the caregivers can immediately get in touch with healthcare professionals.
The later can save the life of the person with immediate paramedic care before being transferred
to the hospital for further treatment in the medical ward.
Another important form of telehealth that has been also contributing to the quality care if
the patent largely is called “store and forward method”. This mode mainly works where a patient
or a general physician can transmit the recorded health history of the patients through a secured
mode of electronic communication system to another practitioner, for example an expert in a
particular health domain (Rajda et al., 2018). The later can utilize the information for evaluating
the case if the patient and accordingly rendering a service that is outside of a real time or like that
of the live interaction (Pulley et al., 2018). On close analysis, it can be seen that the there exists a
basic difference between the live video interaction and that of the storage and forward
technology. In comparison to the former, the later provides the professionals with access to data
only after it has been collected and involves different communication tools of which emails are
the most common. The former ensures live interaction and no storing of any information

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henceforth. An example can be provided in order to provide a detailed understanding of the
entire procedure of working of this system. There might be many communities where service
users come to general physicians with complex disorders. In such cases, the professionals might
need to guidance of expert opinion from surgeons to other specialized expert healthcare
professionals. In such situations, this telehealth medium found to be extremely helpful in not
only providing quality and safe care to patient but also reducing the cost of the resources that
would have been required otherwise.
Remote patient monitoring is one important medium of telehealth. Ong et al. (2016)
states that with the help of this medium, personal health and medical data collection from an
individual persons present in one location is sent through electronic communication to another
provider. The later provider is present in different location for use in care as well as the related
support. Studies have appraised the medium of working in this telehealth medium as it helps the
provider in continuing to track healthcare data for a service user who had already been
discharged to home or another care facility from hospitals or other healthcare centers. This form
of telehealth is highly credible in reducing the rates of readmissions that in turn reduces the
chances of patient suffering and wastages of healthcare resources. Many other studies have also
supported this, stating that how remote patient monitoring can help individual service users to
stay healthy in their homes as well as aim the community without the need of physically
attending the service providers chamber for treatment, diagnosis and care. This can be appraised
with the help of an example (Bashi et al., 2017). Often it becomes very difficult for old patients
to travel to the healthcare organizations if they require treatments or guidance or if they have to
come for regular follow up check-ups. This method of telehealth helps in reduction of the