By Kate Shuman, Staff Writer
The future of telemedicine in America is rapidly improving
through the advancements of mobile and wireless technology. Some
popular telemedicine innovations include: interactive
self-assessment tools; education Web sites; monitors that send
readings right into patient medical records; and devices that
let X-rays and other medical images be viewed from anywhere,
nationally as well as internationally.
The medical world has embraced the age of Wi-Fi (wireless
fidelity) with great enthusiasm because it not only provides
greater quality-of-care for patients and their families, but it
also offers a better and quicker way for information and
education to continually reach out to healthcare professionals
no matter their location.
In the not-too-distant-now, a typical hospital visit will not
only feature the usual patient registration through a laptop
computer, but will also include the use of a handheld PDA
(personal digital assistant) or a WLAN (Wireless Location-Area
Network) by a nurse or hospital administrator who will be able
to use it to double-check or complete a patient’s history and
physical at their bedside or while in the waiting room. While in
the hospital, a patient will then be connected to wireless
sensors that will monitor body functions through the
hospital’s computerized network. The data collected can be
accessed by doctors who are at the same hospital, at another
hospital or clinic, or at home. The doctor(s) can then respond
through their own PDA and order the necessary tests and X-rays,
or investigate drug types and interactions, and then e-prescribe
the proper medications, all without having to physically leave
their home or office. X-rays can be sent via wireless
transmission to the radiology department and viewed from a
computer screen. In the surgical suites, every item is bar-coded
and scanned upon use, helping to keep accurate and precise
inventory of all surgical instruments, with new items being
immediately ordered to replace what has just been used. Upon
discharge from the hospital, patients can expect to be followed
at home with the use of wireless sensors and monitors that will
transmit data back to the hospital.
Telemedicine helps to improve the quality of a doctor’s
professional work, along with improving their efficiency in
handling the usual, endless paper trail associated with the
demands of hospital administration and insurance companies.
Other benefits of wireless medicine include:
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Healthcare that’s faster and safer. The information
available over wireless networks for the doctor on-call can
help them make better-informed decisions when paged by a
patient or by a family caregiver, or when handling referrals
from other healthcare workers like nurses or home healthcare
aides.
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Improved billing practices. Everything done for the patient
is immediately recorded and captured by a hospital or office
computer network upon entry by the attending healthcare
professionals. The risk of fraudulent billing also
decreases, and billing departments are able to
electronically submit charges directly to insurance
companies, speeding up the entire process. A decrease in
medical errors will help create increases in cost-saving.
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A
decrease in the amount of “down” or “wait” time for
healthcare professionals and patients. PDAs that have a
Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) feature enables people
to make telephone calls using a computer network, over a
data network like the Internet. VoIP converts the voice
signal from a telephone into a digital signal that travels
over the internet, and then converts it back at the other
end so that a person can speak to anyone with a regular
phone number. This type of technology will reduce the amount
of “wait” time between a nurse-to-physician or
physician-to-physician communication from 20 minutes to only
one minute.
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Doctors are able to obtain quicker answers to questions by
accessing medical information from multiple locations using
their PDAs. They can also obtain drug information and submit
prescriptions electronically to pharmacies for fulfillment.
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Healthcare professionals can perform dictation and
record-keeping tasks away from the office by using their
PDAs.
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Utilizing wireless cellular networks and a range of client
devices, EMTs can transmit patient data to hospitals while
en route in ambulances.
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ER doctors can view patient information on an electronic
white board delivered straight from back-end systems to
their PDAs over wireless networks.
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Through wireless networks, hospital staff can manage
operating room schedules and access new patient information.
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Healthcare workers in the field can access a full-range of
patient and medical information using mobile client devices.
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Participants in clinical trials can access protocols, drug
data, checklists, and patient diaries from various locations
via their mobile handheld devices.
While handheld devices are the present and future of medicine,
it is actually the software being created and implemented which
will ultimately provide the answers needed for the continued
improvement and accuracy of healthcare. PDAs and WLANs are
extending past the individual doctor and going out into
communities across the country where mobile professionals will
work collaboratively, transacting and referring important
medical data back and forth amongst themselves. Computerized
hardware and software have become the connective tissues linking
technology to modern medicine, creating a medical revolution the
likes of which haven’t been seen since such rapid advancements
were made during World Wars I and II. Other areas of medicine,
such as business and administrative applications, are also
improving because of technology with creations like Electronic
Medical Records (EMR), Clinical and Drug References, Patient
Management Systems (PMS), Patient Scheduling Systems, and
e-Prescription writers. It is the hope of patient and
practitioner alike that the revolutionary advancements will
continue to give the medical professional the luxury of more
time … more time to diagnose, more time to get to know the
patient, more time to accurately treat people, and more time to
practice the best medicine possible.
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