Question

I need assistance with this discussion question please. The questions is as follows:

How does telemedicine differ from the traditional medicine?

What are other legal or ethical issues involved in telemedicine?

Which of these issues, in your opinion, will be the most difficult to address?

What technologies or infrastructure are necessary for the successful practice of telemedicine?

What obstacles can prevent healthcare providers from seeing telemedicine as a reliable option, even when access to traditional medicine is difficult or out of reach?

Answer 1

Telecommunication has been referred to as a method of providing health care to the people in different areas or parts of the world with the help of the telecommunication and information technology. It helps to lower the distance barriers and to upgrade the access to the medical care provided by the best care personnel from around the world. It is more helpful to the people of village or the rural communities from where the people cannot get better access to the speciality hospital and care professionals.

Some of the difference between the telecommunication and traditional medication are:

- Tele medication is less costlier than the traditional method of medications

- Tele medication is potential to decrease the urgency in the care and room visits during emergency

- Tele medication helps the physicians to interact with the patient without rushing to the hospital and can treat the patient from where he is.

- in Tele medication the physician will get chance to interact with the patient and to have a better way of two way communication

- Tele medication reduces the cost of unnecessary emergency and re visits and saves the time and energy of the patient from the remote areas.

There are some legal and ethical issues related to the Tele medication. They are:

- authority and the accountability of the health care providers

- the duty of maintaining the confidentiality of the patient

- there will be problems associated with the jurisdiction when there is cross border consultation.

- issues related to the compensation provided for the care using the Tele communication

- it allows the exchange of health information from across the borders

The issue which will be most difficult to address will be related to the maintenance of the confidentiality of the patients information. All the information related to the patient has been sent or discussed through a method of Tele communication in which the sharing of information takes place in either phone, video calling or in the text messages. The information can be shared or may be addressed in the presence of other individuals whose presence has not been approved by the patient. The patient will not have adequate knowledge about the presence of people around the room where the physician is supposedly present and listening to the complaints of the patients. It is against the law to share the information about a particular patient but in this case the patient is entirely blinded about his information being confidential or not.

In my opinion, the technology or the infrastructure which are very important for the success of the Tele medication is a proper system to make files and record it according to the patients. If there is a system which can handle the information to be handed over to the patient and for the patient then it will improve the quality of the Tele medication. The information related to the patient should be opened only by the physician and only to that particular physician. There should be avoiding of the unnecessary exchange of the information .

The obstacles which prevents the health care providers from seeing Tele medication as a reliable option even in the absence of traditional medication is the low trust of the people towards this particular method of treatment. The people have less knowledge about this method of medication. All the people are not fully aware of the presence of it. Also the proper introduction of this method should be done by the government itself inorder to make the recognition of the Tele medication in the people. Once the government is involved the people will trust the method of treatment with confidence.