As we know the major step to fight against COVID-19 is the maintenance of social distancing.

Several institutions, organizations, companies, and health workers are responding unprecedently to save lives by communicating precautionary steps, manufacturing safety masks, ventilators, and other materials. In this context, telehealth is creating a gap between patients and doctors as well as physicians and health systems through its virtual system. This virtual system is very advantageous for the safety of people because people i.e. doctors, patients, and other medical staff do not contact in a direct way by staying at homes so that the virus cannot be transferred to others. Hence, telemedicine is a ready-made and an adequate option for all of us in this critical time.

Telemedicine

What is telemedicine? Telemedicine also is known as e-health or m-heath is a telecommunication technology used by doctors, physicians, and clinicians in order to facilitate the patients by using remote medical treatment. A myriad of telehealth applications has been used for long as a substitute for traditional ways of medical treatment through in-office visits. These services are classified into different technological classes:

Asynchronous Telemedicine

Asynchronous telemedicine transfers the medical facts recorded in the databases to a consultant for future observing. It is usually based on the patient’s histories, recordings, and some additional information.

Synchronous Telemedicine

It is related to communication between people. It is a two-way communication system between a doctor and his attendee. The communication is done by using specific software application embedded with the feature of video meetings environment which allow the doctor to interact face to face with his patients for diagnosis and then for the treatment.

Remote Patient Monitoring

In this category, different technological tools are utilized to track the symptoms of the patient from their home that is a remote location of the patient. After tracking the symptoms, the data is transferred to the hospital.

Telemedicine facilitates people in many ways. It is a great platform for doctor-to-doctor consultations, mental health counseling of the public, patient education, on-call specialty examination of patients, and much more. However, for this purpose it is important to boost employee morale. There are many ways to boost employee morale to ensure high-quality performance during COVID-19. These telehealth tools can help on a large scale to fight COVID-19. They help to maintain social distancing as smartphones can enable communication between serious and critical patients affected with chronic diseases and their physicians by keeping them at their homes instead of sending them to populate settings. Remote monitoring can also help with the routine checkups for diabetes patients or heart patients. It offers mental health counseling as well.

Telemedicine as Healthcare Practice:

The initial phase towards introducing a telehealth service at your clinic or hospital is to choose the finest technology provider. After choosing the technology provider, find the best-suited software. In this way, your telehealth practice is established. After this, search the software which builds the patient’s consent in a direct way in the open processes.

The platform provided by you must be subscription-based. It will reduce one’s upfront and regular recurring costs. These carriers are applied with a modest way of download and there is no need for any extra apparatus beyond a strong internet connection as well as hardware with a camera, for example, laptop or tablet, etc.

Search for the software that can be customized. In this way, you can add several options for your clients such as patient’s registration, waiting room based on virtual queue, and a place for your medical record. Moreover, you can connect the telehealth link with your website in a direct manner. Furthermore, security is a necessity in this regard. Choose the software that does not share links publicly and permits personal verification.

However, the physical area for your practice needs a professional formal space. For instance, it could be a designated room or some practice manager’s office for the visits to be conducted. Your background should be appropriate i.e. a blank wall is suitable or a bookshelf. It is a very good option to have a telehealth superuser serving as the link between the technology provider and the practitioner. Usually, technology providers work with marketing organizations in order to aid you to turn out your service line. Moreover, practice texting could instruct the patients to download your app or go to your website in order to schedule the patient meetings.

Final Thoughts

Hence, this virtual system is very beneficial for everyone including doctors, patients, and other medical assistants for the safety of people because they get in contact without meeting physically and by staying at homes so that the virus cannot be transferred to others. Hence, telemedicine is a convenient and adequate option for all of us in this critical time.