Tele-Health

Tele-Health

Introduction

Health informatics is a parameter at the intersection of computer sciences, the health management and science of information. It deals with the resources, equipments, and the processes and methods that are essential to make best use of the achievement, amassing, revival and the use of knowledge in health and biomedicine. The health informatics tools not only include computers, but the terms of clinical guidelines, prescribed medicine and the communication and information systems. It is used in the nursing faculties, dentistry, clinical care, public health, pharmacy, occupational therapy, and biomedical researches.

Tele-health is an up to date appliance that entails enhancement to the patients' health through the technology use. Tele-health includes every form of nursing practices cracked down on clients, as well as training services and information provided to professionals of health care through the use of tele-communications or electronic modes. Tele-home-care is one major application of tele-health that has become relatively famous with the passage of time. Tele-home-care is a latest way of giving support to patients with chronic diseases. It has several advantages, disadvantages, and other concerns discussed in this paper.

Discussion

Telehealth encompasses all forms of nursing practices focused on customers, as well as information and training services provided to healthcare professionals through the use of telecommunications or electronic means. Telemedicine is a part of telehealth. Telemedicine means medicine practiced at a distance, including diagnosis and treatment as well as the education care. It is a technological resource that enables the optimization of health care services, saving time and money and providing access to remote areas to take care of specialists. It is another powerful tool in the area of telehealth that provides the use of medical data on appropriate networks is education, where medical and nursing students can learn “semiology” distantly, supported by their teacher and with the presence of the patient (Burgess, 2006).

Pros of Tele-Health

In United States, the home care sector has expanded in the late 1980s and early 1990s.These services are provided by nurses (in a ratio of approximately 60 per 100), social workers, auxiliary nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech therapists, dieticians and physicians. Telehealth, telehomecare applications are mainly used by heart patients or diabetics and people that suffering from hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, sepsis and adverse drug reactions. In this context, telehomecare improve the quality of care by facilitating and accelerating the response of health services in case of change in vital signs of patients in their care. Patients receive the services at home is one of the major advantage with respect to telehomecare, an application of telehealth. This is significant as patients, especially elderly patients get impatient and reluctant to stay long in the hospital and require the comfort of home. (Cassin, 2008)

With the help of transmission of data through personal computers and video equipment over simple telephone lines facilitate the telehomecare providers to observe the patients and provide them with services at a lower cost as well. It has been observed that telehomecare patients get more emotional support as interviews depict the ...