WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF DOCTOR-PATIENT INTERACTION?

Hello and welcome to healthy-bee. My name is @rishagamo and I am happy to be participating in the week 10 prompt “Telemedicine: The future of Doctor-patient interaction”.

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What do you understand by the term telemedicine, telemedicine is a term used to refer to the use of ICT in delivering health care services fostering remote consultations, diagnosis and treatment. Healthcare practices have not been left behind by the technological growth from which all sectors of the economy have been benefiting, Doctors and healthcare service providers can provide their services remotely without the need for their physical presence, the use of tools like video conferencing apps (WhatsApp, zoom, google meet etc.) are used by doctors and patients to connect virtually. Platforms like the EHR integration allow direct integration with electronic Health care records making it seamlessly easy to keep records and good documentation of patients.

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The use of smartphones and wearable devices like smartwatches and fitness trackers are good tools for collecting data like vital signs, activity levels and sleep patterns which can be useful information to health service providers in tracking their patient’s well-being and health practice. Smartphones are the components used as tools for video conferencing and are also used to serve as tools for running health apps.

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Another telemedicine technology is the remote patient monitoring devices, these devices may include among others; blood pressure monitors, pulse oximeters, and glucometers, these devices are used to take measurements at home and those measurements are transferrable data through the online medium to their healthcare providers.

Although telemedicine can be seen as the future of doctor-patient interaction, there are a lot of limitations to the use of this technology, including limitations of physical examination, connectivity issues, privacy and other security issues.

• The Limitation of Physical Examination: there are certain examination that cannot be done virtually, some examinations may require the doctor to touch or feel certain parts of his patient to be able to give a proper diagnosis to what is the issue with the patient.
• Connectivity Issues: since it requires the use of the internet, the internet is sometimes slow due to poor network service.
• Privacy and other security issues: in recent times, data online is mostly not secured, having your data and information online calls for serious security measures.

Telemedicine is a great development in the health sector as it offers convenience and easy accessibility to healthcare. However, it is still not a replacement for physical doctor-patient interaction.

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