Medicine & Internet

Real and virtual world of telemedicine

Krystyna Knypl

Telemedical solutions are very interesting not only for patients, but also for producers of many devices, as well as governments. The modern man has up to 160,000 different applications for medical electronic devices at his disposal. You could say that it is strange that with such a flood of products supposedly saving the health of a person is still ill, and the doctors have nothing to do.

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However, the electronic equipment itself does not make a man healthy. The patient needs a doctor ... and the doctor for centuries has been used to examining a patient in person before prescribing something. The canon of medical practice has always been to examine the patient personally. The scope and methods of testing may be different, depending on the specialty, place or the condition of the patient. Expressing an opinion without personal examination of the patient has always been considered shameful. Do we have scientific evidence that a medical opinion based on the telemedical contact with the patient is safe? I do not think so!

When is telemedicine helpful?

Using the capabilities of telemedicine is not limited to creating simple applications. Telemedicine is an interesting addition to the methodology of practicing our profession. It makes it ideal for imaging studies. Mutual exchange of experience on portals for physicians is also a valuable kind of telemedicine.

Monitoring the results of treatment when the diagnosis was previously established in real conditions, monitoring the progress of rehabilitation, ECG monitoring are the examples in which telemedicine is and will be increasingly used.

Teleconsultation

Teleconsultations are valuable in relation to cases and situations when there are no strict guidelines. 

It is interesting to read the reports in which telemedicine included the possibility of complaints to the US Medicaid insurance system. The frequency of complaints was very variable in each state (from 0 to 59 complaints per 10 thousand inhabitants). They were made mostly by elderly patients from 45 to 64 years of age, and bipolar affective disorder and ADHD were a frequent diagnosis among applicants.

Virtuality is flooding more and more areas of the real world, and the boundaries between these two spaces are not sharply defined. These boundaries can sometimes be imperceptibly affected by those whose intentions may be dangerous to others.

The modern world has come up with the concept of e-health and e-diagnosis, but the disease still remains real.

Text and photo
Krystyna Knypl