What is Telemedicine?
Telemedicine is a relatively new concept, and in the world of internet, it develops with lightning speed. This article is for those who want to understand all intricacies of this highly dynamic and fascinating field.
History of Telemedicine
The field of telemedicine has changed drastically from its inception. It was only about fifty years ago that a few hospitals started experimenting with telemedicine to reach patients in remote locations. But with the rapid changes in technology over the last few decades, telemedicine has transformed into a complex integrated service used in hospitals, homes, private physician offices, and other healthcare facilities.
The concept of telemedicine started with the birth of telecommunications technology, the means of sending information over a distance in the form of electromagnetic signals. Early forms of telecommunications technology included the telegraph, radio, and telephone. In the late 19th century, the radio and telephone were just starting to emerge as viable communication technologies. Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in 1876 and Heinrich Rudolf Hertz performed the first radio transmission in 1887.
But it wasn’t until the early 20th century that the general population started to these technologies, and imagine they could be applied to the field of medicine. In 1925, a cover illustration of the Science and Invention magazine featured an odd invention by Dr. Hugo Gernsback, called the “teledactyl.” The imagined tool would use spindly robot fingers and radio technology to examine a patient from afar, and show the doctor a video feed of the patient. While this invention never got past the concept stage, it predicted the popular telemedicine definition we think of today – a remote video consult between doctor and patient.
Several decades later, in the 1950’s, a few hospital systems and university-based medical centers experimenting with how to put concept of telemedicine into practice. Medical staff at two different health centers in Pennsylvania about 24 miles apart transmitted radiologic images via telephone. In 1950’s, a Canadian doctor built upon this technology into a Teleradiology system that was used in and around Montreal. Then, in 1959, Doctors at the University of Nebraska were able to transmit neurological examinations to medical students across campus via a two-way interactive television. By 1964, they had built a telemedicine link that allowed them to provide health services at Norfolk State Hospital, 112 miles away from campus.
Originally, health professionals developed this technology to reach remote patients living in the rural areas. But with time, medical staff and the U.S. government saw the big picture – the potential to reach urban populations with healthcare shortages, and to respond to medical emergencies by sharing medical consults and patient health records without delay. In the 1960s, heavy investments from the U.S. Government, including the Public Health Department, NASA, Department of Defense, and the Health and Human Sciences Department drove research and innovation in telemedicine. Sending cardiac rhythms during emergencies started at about this time. For instance, in Miami, the university medical center worked together with the fire rescue department by sending electro-cardiac rhythm signals over the voice radio channels from the rescue sites.
One especially successful telemedicine project funded by the government was called the Space Technology Applied to Rural Papago Advanced Health Care (STARPAHC), and was a partnership between NASA and the Indian Health Services. The program funded remote medical services to Native Americans living on the Papago Reservation in Arizona and astronauts in space! Projects like STARPAHC drove research in medical engineering, and helped expand advancements in telemedicine. The next few decades saw continued innovations in telemedicine and wider research at universities, medical centers and research companies.
Telemedicine Today
Today the telemedicine field is changing faster than ever before. As technology advances at exponential levels, so does the widespread affordability and accessibility to basic telemedicine tools. For example, not only do we now have the technology for live video telemedicine, but much of the U.S. population has experience using online videochat apps (like Skype or Facetime), and access to a computer or mobile device to use them.
Telemedicine was originally created as a way to treat patients who were located in remote places, far away from local health facilities or in areas of with shortages of medical professionals. While telemedicine is still used today to address these problems, it’s increasingly becoming a tool for convenient medical care. Today’s connected patient wants to waste less time in the waiting room at the doctor, and get immediate care for minor but urgent conditions when they need it.
This expectation for more convenient care, combined with the unavailability of many overburdened medical professionals (especially primary care providers) have led to the rise of telemedicine companies. Many offer patients 24/7 access to medical care with an on-call doctor contracted by that company. Others offer hospitals and larger health centers access to extra clinical staff and specialists, for outsourcing of special cases (common model among teleradiology companies). Still others provide a telemedicine platform for physicians to use to offer virtual visits with their own patients. Increasingly, telemedicine is becoming a way to give medical practices an edge in a competitive healthcare landscape where it’s difficult to stay independent or maintain a healthy bottom line.
Also impacting the rise of telemedicine today is the growing mobile health field. With the wide variety of mobile health apps and new mobile medical devices that are consumer-friendly, patients are starting to use technology to monitor and track their health. Simple home-use medical devices that can take vitals and diagnose ear infections, monitor glucose levels, or measure blood pressure let patients gather needed medical information for a doctor’s diagnosis, without going into the doctor’s office. And again, as more patients get proactive about using technology to manage their health, they also will be more open to alternative ways to get care – through telemedicine!
Difference Between Telemedicine and Telehealth
With the interrelated fields of mobile health, digital health, health IT, telemedicine all constantly changing with new developments, it’s sometimes difficult to pin down a definition for these terms. In much of the healthcare industry, the terms “telehealth” and “telemedicine” are often used interchangeably. In fact, even the ATA considers them to be interchangeable terms. This isn’t surprising since the telehealth and telemedicine definitions encompass very similar services, including: medical education, e-health patient monitoring, patient consultation via video conferencing, health wireless applications, transmission of image medical reports, and many more.
However, if you want to get technical, telemedicine is really a subset of telehealth. Whereas telehealth is a broad term that includes all health services provided using telecommunications technology, telemedicine refers specifically to clinical services. There’s how the California Telehealth Resource Center defines telehealth:
“Telehealth is a collection of means or methods for enhancing health care, public health, and health education delivery and support using telecommunications technologies.”
Telehealth may involve more general health services, like public health services, whereas telemedicine is a specific kind of telehealth that involves a clinician providing some kind of medical services.
Here are a couple quick examples:
Telehealth:
- A public health app that alerts the public of a disease outbreak
- A video-conferencing platform for medical education
Telemedicine:
- A mobile app that lets physicians treat their patients remotely via video-chat
- A software solution that lets primary care providers send patient photos of a rash or mole to a dermatologist at another location for quick diagnosis
As the field of telehealth continues to expand and change, these terms are likely to change and encompass even more health services. Sign up for a telemedicine demo for more insight into the differences.
HIPAA and Telemedicine
Like all technology in the healthcare space, telemedicine solutions need to be HIPAA compliant to protect patient privacy. While an app like Skype might offer a doctor an easy way to consult a patient remotely, using it in that way is not in compliance with HIPAA. Technology used for telemedicine services needs to ensure high-level security and prevent any breaches of patient personal health data.
But as the National Policy Telehealth Resource Center notes, “Compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is more complex than simply using products that claim to be ‘HIPAA-compliant.” Not only does the telemedicine platform need to be compliant, all providers, patients, and staff using the tool need to ensure they are in compliance with HIPAA. A telemedicine software vendor, for instance, not only needs to build a secure product, but also ensure their telemedicine company is operating in accordance with HIPAA.
HIPAA compliance entails an organized set of secure, monitored, and documented practices within and between covered entities. Though products cannot ensure compliance, some products may contain elements or features that allow them to be operated in a HIPAA-compliant way.
Types of Telemedicine Consultations
What do you envision when someone says “telemedicine”? The most popular image is probably a doctor consulting a patient via a videochat platform. Two-way video conferencing is quickly becoming a popular virtual alternative to in-person doctor visits.
A telemedicine definition encompasses a much broader range of healthcare services than just real-time medical consultations over video. Telemedicine includes any clinical services provided via telecommunications technology. Here’s a summary of the main types of telemedicine.
Store-and-forward telemedicine solutions
Sometimes called asynchronous telemedicine, store-and-forward solutions enable healthcare providers to forward and share patient medical data (lab results, images, videos, records) with a provider at a different location. These platforms offer a kind of sophisticated, secure, email platform – a way to share private patient data online in a secure way.
The asynchronous term refers to the fact that the consulting specialist, patient, and primary doctor don’t need to all be communicating at the same time. As a parallel, think about a telephone call versus an email exchange. A telephone call (synchronous) requires all parties to be communicating in real-time – an email exchange does not.
Store-and-forward telemedicine works best for interprofessional medical services – where a provider needs to outsource diagnosis to a specialist. For instance, teleradiology relies heavily on store-and-forward technology to allow technicians and healthcare professionals at smaller hospitals to share patient x-rays for diagnosis by a specialist at another location. Asynchronous telemedicine is also commonly used for teledermatology and teleophthalmology.
Store-and-forward telemedicine is a great way to increase healthcare efficiency since a provider, patient, and specialist don’t need to be in the same place, at the same time. It also facilitates faster diagnosis, especially for patients located in underserved settings that may not have the necessary specialist on staff. Overall, this adds up to lower patient wait times, more accessible healthcare, better patient outcomes, and a more optimized schedule for physicians.
Remote patient monitoring
Telemedicine solutions that fall into the remote patient monitoring (RPM) allow healthcare providers to track a patient’s vital signs and other health data from a distance. This makes it easy to watch for warning signs and quickly intervene in patients who are at health-risk or are recovering from a recent surgery, for example. This type of telemedicine is sometimes also called telemonitoring or home telehealth.
RPM telemedicine is quickly rising in popularity as more health professionals realize its potential effects on chronic care management. For instance, a patient with diabetes who has a glucose tracker in their home can measure their glucose levels at regular intervals and transmit them to their doctor. If all is well, those results are simply recorded. If something looks off, the physician may flag it and call in the patient for a consult.
Like most telemedicine tools, remote patient monitoring solutions make it easier for patients and physicians to maintain close communication. Many RPM solutions record and transmit a patient’s medical data automatically, generating a regular report for the physician. In some cases, this medical data is transmitted to a team of health monitoring professionals who are responsible for flagging any warning signs and sending them on to the physician, if needed.
The key to successful remote patient monitoring telemedicine is having the right health tracking tools in the patient’s home. With the recent growth of wearables and mobile medical devices, this is getting easier. Patients have better, cheaper, more accessible tools at their disposal for tracking their health signs and reporting medical data.
Real-time telehealth
Real-time telemedicine (also called “synchronous telemedicine”) is probably what most people first think of when they hear “telemedicine.” Real-time telemedicine requires a live interaction between either a health professional and patient, or between health professionals, using audio and video communication. Think videochat. While most real-time telemedicine software is much more sophisticated than a simple videochat platform, the basic goal is to both see and talk to the patient from afar. This type of telemedicine is meant to offer a virtual alternative to the in-person doctor’s visit.
The popularity of real-time telemedicine solutions has increased rapidly in the past few years, as best telemedicine companies like Teladoc and DoctoronDemand have offered an affordable, easy way for patients to connect with a doctor from anywhere and get immediate treatment.
Doctors are also starting to adopt real-time telemedicine solutions to give their patients the added convenience of virtual doctor visits, improve their care outcomes, boost work-life balance, and reap the many other benefits. With simply a compatible device, internet connection, microphone, and webcam – a patient can now get medical treatment. That’s the beauty of real-time telemedicine.