Telemedicine and remote consultations
An inevitable result of the recent pandemic and the arrival of digitization in healthcare has been the rise of digital hospitals or remote consultations and the development of applications like ours, so that patients can carry out strict monitoring from their mobile phones. everything related to your health and professionals can monitor your treatment remotely.
The so-called telemedicine, we commented in our previous post, supposes not only the advancement of medical science, but also a giant step in terms of social and socio-sanitary benefits, empowering the patient and making them a participant in their own treatment.
It is about offering all those services that a patient would find in a hospital center from the comfort of their home and using a device with an internet connection. The ability to make consultations from anywhere, a closer follow-up in the case of chronic pathologies, reduce waiting lists and expand the scope of work.
There are not a few professionals who warn about the possible dehumanization of the health system with the implementation of this type of solution, as Jiménez-Rodríguez et al. in a 2019 (pre-pandemic) article, so it is important to use these tools with consideration and caution. Seeking to empathize with the patient at all times.
Digital hospitals
Some government agencies and ministries have already created their own healthcare digitization strategy with the aim of computerizing patient information and alleviating the workload and waiting lists suffered by global healthcare systems.
In Chile, for example, the “Digital Hospital” system (literally, as it sounds) was introduced, a new model of health care, centered on the patient, and which takes advantage of the potential of technologies to bring care closer to people, installing an alternative to the traditional model.
Without going any further, in Spain, some autonomous communities have services of these characteristics, such as the “ClicSalud+” system of the Junta de Andalucía or the “Electronic Health Record” of the Generalitat Valenciana in which the patient can request an appointment , consult your medical history or find out what vaccine you have been inoculated with.
In this way we can see that there is already work in terms of digitization in health management, not only at the institutional level, but also at the level of care and user service. But if you need more information, dear Internet user, (at least as regards the digitization of the Spanish health system) I invite you to read the article published in 2021 by Carbajo Martín et al. on computerization and the development of technology in the Spanish autonomous health systems.
Now, what would be the degree of implementation of digital care services? Is there really a digital hospital or a project of these characteristics underway?
Well, the answer is a yes with nuances (intensely driven by the pandemic to a YES with capital letters) but that has a lot of work ahead of it. If you want to know more, continue reading.
On-demand telecare?
The reality is that, on many levels, it is difficult to briefly define the applications based on remote healthcare that digital solutions like ours can provide.
Presumably if you ask anyone what a virtual or digital hospital would consist of, the first thing they would imagine would be a kind of virtual health center that you can access with futuristic glasses. But nothing is further from the current reality (who knows if the metaverse will bring it to us).
At this time we can find applications that use artificial intelligence, video call systems for teleconsultations and remote analysis of the physiological constants of patients. We are going to see 4 forms of existing telecare:
- Teleconsultation: video consultation or remote consultation. It offers the possibility of carrying out a professional-patient interaction at a distance. We introduced it to the platform in the form of a chat. It is the most widely used telemedicine modality in primary care.
- Telediagnosis: performing diagnoses by exchanging data between medical institutions, professionals and patients. In this way, we can understand it as the interaction between health professionals to conclude a final diagnosis or to obtain data remotely that guarantee the diagnosis of the pathology. This last definition is related to the next point.
- Remote monitoring: remote control of indicators (physiological or biometric) of a patient and/or compliance with their treatment. Especially useful in the monitoring and control of chronic patients, since it allows to considerably reduce face-to-face medical visits. It is the badge of our application.
- Telesurgery: A very interesting field. This is the possibility of performing or assisting a surgical intervention remotely. For example, with virtual reality glasses or using robotic surgery technology.
Digital health in the hands of professionals
As a conclusion, we will introduce this last section in which we would like to talk, as a company committed to health and its users, the essential role played by health professionals, as well as health managers and managers in the implementation and development of the digital solutions in the sector.
We are not kidding when we talk about a future in which virtual hospitals are as commonplace on a daily basis as it is to consult Wikipedia or read an online newspaper. But these actions continue to have the most important factor behind them: the human factor.
It is tremendously important to understand that digitization does not come to dehumanize health, much less to displace the professionals who are dedicated to it. But for this we must build it always taking patients into account and focusing on them to bring health to their doorstep.
Because while we at TRAK love to see ourselves as a digital rehab service, the truth is that without the rehab professionals behind the platform, we wouldn’t be the same, just like our colleagues at Legit.Health ( that would make up a hypothetical department of dermatology) require specialist dermatologists.