Telehealth: A Personal Connection with Healthcare Providers - Essay Sample

Introduction

Telehealth is neither cold nor impersonal. Telemedicine offers unique and different healthcare options compared to physical contact between a patient and doctor. Communication with healthcare professionals through messages, emails, or video conferencing still provides personal conversations. Being able to video chat or face time with healthcare providers permits for back and forth dialogue just as it would happen in face-to-face. For it to work, there must be a personal connection between the two parties to facilitate diagnosis and provision of medical solutions. Telehealth provides a real-time exchange of information which allows for personal engagement. The communication via video conferencing and instant messaging is lively and which allows clients to provide their personal information, including health records.

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What are the advantages of telehealth?

One of the greatest strength of telehealth is convenience. Through telehealth, people can access medical attention at the comfort of their homes by messaging or video calling their doctor. Telemedicine is also time-efficient in that it provides a quick link to healthcare providers other than having to travel to their offices and waiting to be allowed into the doctor's room (Evist Telemedicine Solution, 2018). Patients can access their doctors at any time of the day. On the side of healthcare providers, telehealth ensures cost-efficiency by lessening the number of people visiting the offices and number of employees in the front desk.

What are the disadvantages of telehealth?

Telehealth limits physical examinations. Though having high-quality video conferencing, the virtual meeting may not be enough to facilitate diagnosis, tests and treatment of patients. Therefore, some conditions will still require the patients to seek physical meeting with doctors for proper medical care. Secondly, telehealth depends on hardware and software that may be costly (Evist Telemedicine Solution, 2018). As a result, it may require training, hiring of extra IT staff and purchase of other supplementary equipment, including internet connection. The older adults may not know to use this technology; hence it might be ineffective to them. Thirdly, telehealth may promote misdiagnosis, especially on the complicated diseases.

What other industries could benefit from this type of technology?

The counselling industry stands to benefit from the telehealth technology. People can attend their therapy sessions through IM or videoconferencing. In physical therapy, the therapists can instruct and even demonstrate their clients to do specific tasks and stretches. Another industry would be financial advising through Video chat or IM. People can chat with their financial consultants about stocks and investments.

Reference

Evist Telemedicine Solution. (2018, May 25). Telehealth benefits, advantages of Telehealth. Retrieved from https://evisit.com/resources/benefits-of-telehealth/