Opportunities in Telemedicine in the wake of the COVID-19
Telehealth is not just about the technology; delivery of this technology will demand changes in curating data and working practices. The need to change work processes was always a barrier to telehealth. The pandemic has forced a change that appears to be a lasting one. To protect patients and healthcare professionals during the pandemic by enabling work without physical presence at the workplace, telehealth solutions had to be adopted.
Telehealth has had a positive effect on patient safety and outcomes. However, telehealth does come with its risks, including security breaches, poor software engineering, and exacerbating the digital divide. Telehealth platforms built hereon must be reliable, secure, and flexible enough to accommodate professional, regulatory, and healthcare organizations’ standards. These platforms have to be monitored and updated in a timely fashion.
To reach the full potential of telemedicine and telehealth, professionals and patients will have to place their trust in new-age tech to keep health information private and secure. The latest encryption systems and data security must be deployed to protect patient privacy. Make your patients aware of the privacy choices they make to prevent disclosure of private personal information and ensure data security. The interests of one need to be considered against the interests of the many while forming policy on data sharing, while being cognizant of the fact that typically, different cultures value such interests differently.
Telehealth solutions, to optimize digital inclusion, must be easy to use and maintain, which includes the availability of decent internet facilities. Businesses will have to consider the practices and needs of settled residents as well as migrants. Inclusion also means affordability of care for patients and healthcare organizations, which might demand strategic changes in funding models. Communities in remote locations with insufficient access to traditional care providers have traditionally been early adopters of telehealth. Experiences and outcomes of telehealth are dependent on design details and factors such as digital literacy, health literacy, and the quality of integration with clinical care pathways.
Telehealth solutions must be available and used internationally to reach real economies of scale. Organizations will have to collaborate and learn what works well, when, where, why, and how to realize the long-term benefits of telehealth. Government support of the health technology industry is key to developing then testing different telehealth solutions that are agile and safe. The industry needs to work with patients and professionals to ensure data security, digital inclusion, and solutions that are flexible, intuitive, and tailored to users’ needs. This tailoring will prove to be effective in overcoming resistance to transforming present work practices. New knowledge and competencies can be empowering for patients, clinicians, and caregivers alike. Just as COVID-19 has rapidly advanced digital literacy, so too, telehealth can rapidly advance health literacy.
One must understand that certain clinical conditions will need physical interventions or examinations and that care is a relational and human activity while working towards a telemedicine-enabled future. Investment has been insufficient in developing technologies that work for patients and clinicians and adapting healthcare lifestyles and systems to fully exploit these technologies to date. The COVID-19 pandemic represents a real incentive and opportunity to develop advanced telehealth solutions which can transform people’s lives and the health care landscape, both locally & internationally. Telehealth offers capabilities for care and treatment, remote screening, and assists in surveillance, monitoring, prevention, mitigation, and detection of the impacts on healthcare related to COVID-19, indirectly. The initiatives triggered in this process will reshape the future space of telemedicine in health services. But the core value of telehealth might not be the recent advances in clinical outcomes. Rather, those advances might follow from better processes delivering more cost-effective health care. We at Nova Telehealth, recognizing the above-mentioned points, have come up with a solution that works for all.
