Telemedicine – the practice of delivering healthcare remotely – is booming on an international scale. Through telemedicine adoption, healthcare providers both large and small have a significant opportunity to provide better patient care as well as to open up potentially lucrative new revenue sources.
What Is Telemedicine?
Telemedicine connects healthcare providers via advanced telecommunications services with the goal of broadening and improving patient care. More specifically, telemedicine practice includes:
- Consultation provided by doctors to patients and other healthcare providers at distant facilities.
- Remote assistance in surgery, emergency services, complex clinical cases, or other medical procedures.
- Remote patient monitoring.
- Exchange of health information between disparate care providers.
- Online training of medical staff.
For example, a rural hospital may not provide certain in-house specialty services to its patient base. However, by employing telemedicine technologies, a specialist located in a larger metropolitan area, or even elsewhere in the world, can provide diagnostic and remedial medical expertise that would not normally be available.
