Telehealth: Medical Technology For The Future Here Today Research Paper Examples

Telehealth technology continues to advance, particularly giving rise to stunning capabilities in medical records-keeping and patient care. Delivery of services especially for the homebound individual devises an entirely new horizon of which Telehealth applications are a key part. The conversation about Telehealth benefits in the medical sphere, is so ubiquitous these days, and some research reports have also discussed its constraints. However, a plethora of exciting news shapes the horizon of Telehealth applications and nursing perspectives are in an ideal position to take note. For example, in the Online Journal of Nursing Informatics, McKnight (2012) explains about an existing need for greater expansions in telehealth applications. Also, McKnight (2012) addresses the needs of complex issues in terms of their correlation to telemedicine technology. The article further comments upon professional nursing care practitioners’ assessment of how telehealth informatics might be improved, in terms of affordability, remote access, and dual-diagnoses. This paper therefore considers Telehealth’s role in benefits, service delivery, informatics control, and constraints – in terms of shared communication across the internal and external medical environments.
Briefly and foremost, how can Telehealth be defined? According to one of the nation’s top medical institutions, the Mayo Clinic, telehealth can be described as a digitally-driven computerized technology used for conveying informational and communications services related to healthcare circumstances, and well-being needs (“Telehealth: When Technology Meets Health Care,” 2015). Mayo Clinic experts also include Telehealth’s function as embracing a diversity of health-care service treatments, both within the internal and external environments (“Telehealth: When Technology Meets Health Care,” 2015). The same source also relays that Telehealth may also be known as ‘e-health’ and covers the following crucial activities and areas: (a) Online support-groups, (b) Email/online communications with healthcare providers, (c) EHRs – or, Electronic Health Records, (d) Remote vital-signs monitoring, like blood pressure and more.
Obviously, the benefits of Telehealth technology in the medical realm is outstanding and offering increasing ways to improve healthcare every day. Nurses wield a formidable influence over the actual implementation of Telehealth technology. They are the ones who literally engage most of the hands-on aspects of monitoring medical illnesses. According to McKnight (2012) the use of this telecommunications technology is one of the most extensive growth areas in the provision of home-based healthcare, where folks are homebound, and especially valuable in diabetes cases requiring glucose blood monitoring, and mental conditions like bi-polar cases. She explains that the application is absolutely essential in terms of meeting the frequency in checking up on homebound patients, or those in rural area when an Internet signal is difficult to get. While it is true that Telehealth’s benefits, such as healthcare service delivery and informatics control are wonderful, there are constraints.
Besides offering an excellent alternative to in-person transportation costs to remote patient locations, telenursing and telemedicine can allow for the transmission of clinical imagery and real-time data feeds. Nurses and other healthcare practitioner professionals, however, are beginning to notice the constraints of telehealth technology. McKnight (2012) notes that a need exists to expand telemedicine applications for when the care needs of individuals becomes complex. For example, if they reside in remote locations, and need frequently intermittent access to healthcare McKnight (2012) explains that this can be challenging. Via a methodology coupled with the examination of a complex-care Case Study she considered a step-by-step scenario looking at such factors as poverty, existing available community healthcare workers, and the development of a ‘best-practices’ healthcare plan for individuals so affected. McKnight is not alone in recognizing the constraints of Telehealth capabilities.
One Health Information Management journal article looked at the technology in the context of healthcare delivery options – costs, and/or constraints – in the medical sub-field of telepsychiatry. In other words, think of it as combining the use of telehealth communications technology to the psychiatric department of medicine. The good news, according to journal scholars who wrote the report Deslich, Stec, Tomblin, and Coustasse (2013) believe the concept of telepsychiatry provides better access and serves higher-quality care to individual patients who regularly depend upon restorative functions of psychiatric care, and that its benefits perfectly integrate into the traditionally established psychiatric facilities. In this way, other segments are reachable such as prisons, urban, rural, as well as those patients with limited mobility. The remarkable part is that Telehealth affords all different kinds of communication and information sharing: audio, video, remote-access (as previously discussed), as well as robotics. Constraints do exist.
One of the key constraints involve reimbursement cost factors. Although the Medicare and Medicaid systems are increasingly working with third-party providers who do reimburse, according to Deslich et al. (2013), each of these parties has limitations, with add-on type fees that may charge for equipment, transmission, and administrative, processing. Additionally, licensure protocols vary from state-to-state and patient security, confidentiality, and predominantly safety are a concern. Predictably, not much research has yet been accumulated in this area, in terms of how Telehealth faces certain roadblocks of constraints. But privacy and confidentiality represent the two ‘biggies’ as far as records’ access, and sorting out ownership and responsibility for that data access, in the first place. See the problem? A final statement on the constraints of telehealth on psychiatry concerns the mentally ill residing in prison complexes. Deslich et al. (2013) indicate that nearly three-quarters of all telemedicine prison visits were associated with psychiatric medical cases. However, Steele and Lo (2013) agree that huge constraints are associated with functionalities of telehealth applications being impeded by not having enough bandwidth connectivity (p. 533). In other words, either weak Internet connection into remote areas, or not enough chain-link wireless ‘power’ to (whether hardware/software, or land infrastructure-based) implement acceptable levels of communication (p. 533). These obstacles may include audio or video impediments, but certainly impacts diagnosis and support in making clinical-level decisions, as well as other important treatments and informational transmissions. Nevertheless, the roles of computer technology under the classification of Telehealth and the Internet in medicine, are vast and impressive – at once providing outstanding benefits and facing the challenges of a few constraints.

References

Deslich, S., Stec, B., Tomblin, S., & Coustasse, A. (2013). Telepsychiatry in the 21st Century: Transforming healthcare with technology. Online Research Journal – Perspectives in Health Information Management. Retrieved from http://perspectives.ahima.org/telepsychiatry-in-the-21st-century-transforming-healthcare-with-technology/#.VR3DnNXF9rb
The Mayo Clinic. (2015). Telehealth: When technology meets health care [Data file]. Retrieved from http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/consumer-health/in-depth/telehealth/art-20044878
McKnight, S. (October 2012). Telehealth: Applications for complex care. Online Journal of Nursing Informatics (OJNI), 16(3), Available at http://ojni.org/issues/?p=2034
Steele, R., & Lo, A. (2013). Telehealth and ubiquitous computing for bandwidth-constrained rural and remote areas. Personal & Ubiquitous Computing, 17(3), 533-543.