Telehealth: Latest Technological Advancements and Their Importance

This report examines the significance of telehealth in modern healthcare, emphasizing the necessity and benefits of incorporating technology to improve patient care and accessibility. It analyzes the fundamental differences between synchronous and asynchronous telehealth methods, highlighting the advantages and limitations of each approach. The report also includes a personal perspective on the role of telehealth in reducing healthcare disparities and increasing access, while acknowledging potential challenges related to technological literacy. Furthermore, it reviews the latest technological advancements in nursing, particularly the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, and their impact on clinical decision-making and reducing medication errors. The study concludes that AI enhances the precision and efficiency of healthcare practices.

Presented by:
Telehealth and Importance of Latest
Technological Advancement in Healthcare

Objective of the study
To study the importance and the need of
telehealth in healthcare
To analyze the basic difference between the
synchronous and asynchronous tele-health
Highlighting my personal opinion and
understanding for tele-health
Reviewing the latest technological
advancement in nursing

Telemedicine and Telehealth
Telemedicine is defined as a process
of electronic communication by the
use of information technologies in
order to deliver clinical services to
clients at different locations
The term telehealth is used to
describe broader applications of
technologies to distance customer
out-reach and education by the use
of electronic communications and
information technologies
(Nelson, 2017)

Need for Telehealth
Helps in remote monitoring of the patients along
with remote collection of the patient’s health data
(blood pressure, blood glucose level, ECG data
and weight)
Helps in providing direct care to the patient by
sharing of the audio, video of the specialist. The
process is helpful for patients located at a remote
position to the clinic
Helps to provide medical education and
mentoring
(Nelson, 2017)

Need for tele-health
Improves the access of healthcare to a diverse
group of people in irrespective of the location
Decreases the health-related inequality to
areas with limited access to the healthcare
professionals
Helps to reduce the cost of care and unwanted
hospital admissions via reducing the
transportation costs for the patients with low
socio-economic status
(Nelson, 2017)

Synchronous Telehealth
It is real time tele-health
It involves the use of information and
communication technologies in order to enable
the service users and the service givers to
communicate live or in a synchronous manner
over both short and long distances
It requires high speed internet connection for fast
transmission of data in real-time
It also requires video cameras for real-time
conversation
(Ho, 2016)

Asynchronous Tele-health
Asynchronous tele-health records clinically
important digital health data from one location
and transmits the information to healthcare
professionals located in remote location
The healthcare professionals then decode this
data in order to make proper diagnosis for the
patients
The main mode of digital data collection
include still images, audio-files and video files
(Ho, 2016)

Difference between synchronous
and asynchronous tele-health
Synchronous tele-health promotes live
conversation between the patient/patient’s
family members with the healthcare
professionals
Asynchronous tele-health promotes
transmission of patient’s data to the
healthcare professionals but does not
require live conversation or
communications
(Ho, 2016)

Personal opinion to tele-
health
The application of technology in healthcare
is helpful in the present era of the
technological advancement
I think the application of healthcare
technology through tele-medicine helps to
reduce the healthcare disparity
Helps to increase the access of healthcare
while reducing the healthcare cost

Personal opinion to tele-
health
However, I also feel that people who are
not exposed to the technological
advancement might face difficulty in
handling the tele-health service
Communicating with the healthcare
professionals might reduce the patient’s
autonomy as patients from the remote
areas mainly prefers face-to-face
communication

New Technology in
Healthcare
The new emerging
technology in
healthcare is artificial
intelligence (AI)
It helps to mimic
human cognitive
functions
It helps to bring a shift
in paradigm in
healthcare with rapid
progress in the
analytical techniques
(Jiang et al., 2017) Figure: Artificial Intelligence in
Healthcare
(Source: Jiang et al., 2017)

Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare
and Application of Robotics
Increase in demands of delivering high
quality technology in healthcare has increase
the application of computer-based and
robotic technology
This computer-based robotic technology rely
on the artificial intelligence
The aim of the study conducted by Ashrafian,
Darzi and Athanasiou (2015) was to text the
efficacy of the next generation medical
diagnostic and medical robotics with the help
of Turing test, a qualitative tool