Studies in health technology and informatics
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2008
Telemedicine for home health and the new patient: when do we really need to go to the hospital?
This chapter will review the current state-of-the-art of home health services in the telemedicine environment. Two aspects in particular will be discussed that reflect where most of the efforts in home telehealth care are being directed. ⋯ In this application, the users may be patients with chronic conditions such as asthma or diabetes that require regular monitoring to achieve or maintain healthy functioning, but they are typically not in an acute phase. More and more often, however, the users of distance monitoring technologies are relatively healthy people looking to enhance their health awareness and healthy status by monitoring various vital signs to alert them of any potential changes in their health status that would require actual medical attention.
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Although wound care has been practiced for centuries, telewound care is a relatively new concept. Currently, only a few pilot programs are in existence. Telewound care has yet to achieve the popularity and recognition of its other telemedicine predecessors amongst members of the health care industry and public alike. ⋯ With the advances in the field of telecommunications in connecting people across distances at a fraction of the time and costs, improved outcomes reported in other fields of telemedicine and positive legislative changes, there is an enormous potential in this field. We now have the ability, knowledge and resources to develop telewound care programs, which can provide high quality patient care in a more concise and cost-effective way. It is certainly a welcoming relief to a field that has traditionally been known to pose an emotional, physical and financial drain to all those involved.
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Telemedicine for trauma and emergency management is emerging as new frontier and is evolving as an integral part trauma care of modern trauma practice. This chapter will review the current applications and future endeavors of telemedicine and telepresence to trauma and emergency care as the new frontiers of telemedicine application.
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Here, the possibilities to build integrated primary health care telemedicine services are presented accompanied with available epistemic criteria for quality evaluation purposes. Given that the cost of sanitary care is increasing continuously the telemedicine approach is a challenge for providing quality care and at low cost to the rural citizens.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2007
Empowering patients to improve the quality of their care: design and implementation of a shared health maintenance module in a US integrated healthcare delivery network.
We describe a health maintenance module within a personal health record designed to improve the quality of routine preventive care for patients in a large integrated healthcare delivery network. This module allows patients and their providers to share an online medical record and decision support tools. Our preliminary results indicate that this approach is well-accepted by patients and their providers and has significant potential to facilitate patient-provider communication and improve the quality of routine health maintenance care. Further research will determine the long term impact and sustainability of this approach.