Telemedicine
Telemedicine denotes the delivery and
provision of healthcare and consultative
services to individual patients and the
transmission of information related to care,
over distance, using telecommunication
technologies.
Telemedicine incorporates direct clinical,
preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic
services and treatment; consultative and
follow-up services; remote monitoring of
patients; rehabilitative services and
patient education.
Health care providers are faced with
scientific, social and economic challenges
in the delivery of healthcare services.
Telemedicine can meet many of these
challenges in an organized and cost
efficient manner through a better exchange
of information, medical expertise and access
to quality care. Telemedicine is not a
medical speciality but a health care
delivery system that is revolutionizing
medicine and the delivery of Health care as
it is known today.
Telemedicine, utilizing today's significant
advances in technology and telecommunication
techniques, provides a new method of
effectively delivering health care. It is
now possible to transmit text, sound, images
and video from one location to another.
Telemedicine allows its users to reduce the
burdens of inferior health care access
through utilization of technology.
Applications
-
Reaching out to distant locations, which
can significantly reduce the time and
costs of the patient transportation.
-
Transmitting images to key medical
centers for long distance evaluation by
appropriate medical specialists.
-
Permitting physicians doing clinical
research to be linked together despite
geographical separation.
-
Charting patient records and diagnostic
images.
Telemedicine applied to medical practice
results in
-
Reduction in the need to transfer
patients to a site of medical expertise
-
Decrease in the relocation of medical
specialists to the patient
-
Better organized and less costly health
care
-
More efficient and effective use of
medical and technological resources
-
Enhanced diagnostic and therapeutic
quality of care
-
Opens up new possibilities for
continuing education or training for
isolated or rural health practitioners
Videoconferencing and Clinical Programmes
Videoconferencing in Telemedicine has proven
to be a fantastic tool for educational
purposes, apart from its primary role of
carrying out online tele-consultations.
At present, Apollo Hospitals has a weekly
schedule of clinical meetings held across
the country. Over 4 centres participate
simultaneously in these meetings, in and as
the network.
These clinical meetings range from the
discussing of case studies to the relaying
of Surgical Workshops conducted at Apollo
Hospitals to venues in the other states.
Other programmes include:
-
Relay of live Angiography and
Angioplasty procedures to important
conferences and workshops in other
cities
-
Relay of OT procedures to a gathering of
over 1000 doctors
-
Relay of vital inauguration programmes
and CMEs across all Apollo centres,
throughout the country and to other non-
Apollo Telemedicine centres.
Med Intergra GoLive
Apollo Health Street has indigenously
designed an enterprise application called 'Medintegra
GoLive'. Using the latest web streaming
technology, it facilitates real time,
web-based interactive training.
It permits an unlimited number of doctors or
students from anywhere in the world to log
on to a two-way audio-video presentation
using their own computers. The number of
participants in this programme is limited by
the number of licenses a customer wishes to
purchase. It could be as few as 50 or as
many as a thousand.
In addition, a trainer can log in from
anywhere in the world with just a multimedia
computer and an Internet connection and
carry out her/his training.
Medical Second Opinions
Complex medical cases often need more than
one specialist opinion to ensure accurate
diagnosis. With the help of cutting-edge
technology-aided diagnostics and access to
super specialists, the trend of seeking
medical second opinions is growing. General
practitioners or specialists use
Telemedicine to seek opinions from super
specialists to confirm diagnoses, plan
treatments and provide acute interventional
plans in case of medical emergencies.
Often cases also require multiple inputs
such as:
Tele-Radiology - reporting of radiology images
by well known super specialists at the
Telemedicine Speciality Centre (TSC)
Tele-Pathology - view sharing of the biopsy
slides
Tele-Cardiology - where the consulting doctor
can perform a live ECHO or a live
Angiography and transmit the same to the TSC
for a second opinion and to arrive at the
final diagnosis
