Telehealth

In the last 10+ years, vast advances in medical/medicine and technology have combined and resulted in the use of new terms. Policymakers, healthcare systems, advocacy groups, and vendors may unknowingly use terms incorrectly when discussing medicine and technology as this landscape evolves. This is particularly true when it comes to the terms, Telemedicine and Telehealth. Many people use them freely but do get them confused, there is certainly a difference between the two.

The World Health Organization (WHO) refers to telemedicine as “healing from a distance“. It is the use of telecommunications technology and information technologies to provide remote clinical services to patients. Physicians use telemedicine for the transmission of digital imaging, video consultations, and remote medical diagnosis.

Today, individuals no longer have to go through the long drawn out process to schedule an in-person visit with a physician to receive treatment. Today’s technology allows the use of secure video and audio connections making it possible for medical specialists to treat patients outside of their offices helping offer the access to care from technology.

HealthIT.gov defines Telehealth as “the utilization of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support and promote long-distance clinical health care, patient and professional health education, public health and health administration.”

While this statement sounds a lot like what people call telemedicine, there is one clear distinct modification. Unlike Telemedicine, Telehealth also covers non-clinical events such as Continuing medical Education (CME), administrative group meetings and physician training. Telehealth is not classified as a service, but a assortment of methods to communicate improve patient care and education information delivery.

Basically , an individual can think of Telehealth as all-encompassing, as telemedicine and Telecare fall under its umbrella.

The words telemedicine and Telehealth bring with them an astronomical amount of debate among individuals across the healthcare landscape. One major focal point for this debate is because of the varying definitions connect to to the terms themselves. Some experts seem to consider telemedicine to be more on the the physician focused and Telehealth to include the cornucopia of health professionals in general.

As technology is always evolving into a moving target in the medical world, the two terms will likely become more divergent moving forward. As technology advances, there will always be industry experts keeping up with the changing policy and requirements for physicians, clinics, surgery centers and hospitals. If your Healthcare organization has interest in utilizing this kind of technology of Telehealth or telemedicine please contact us for a free consultation to discuss more.