I’ve selected 7 potential applications of telehealth in different areas of healthcare. For sure there are more available, but I think these ones have a great benefit for patients:
1 – Reduction of hospital visits: In cardiac patients with pacemakers or implanted cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) had been show that there’s a potential to reduce hospital visits, suggested a study (SAVE-HM Trial) published in 2013 in the International Journal of Cardiology, by pre-detecting critical events that could lead to a unscheduled visit.
2 – Rate reduction of all-cause mortality: Other study (IN-TIME) as showed a reduced mortality rate in heart failure patient with ICD or cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillators (CRT-D) with a telemonitoring system. The data was transmitted daily or by a clinic (arrhythmia) or technical event from the patient’s implanted device to a central monitoring unit. The key action here was the proactive prevention.
3 – Better glucose control: A Web-based telemedicine system demonstrated that could benefit pregnant woman with diabetes as a complement to conventional outpatient clinic visits in a study from Cadiz, Spain. It was published this January in Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics. They showed the same level of mean glycated hemoglobin level during pregnancy or after the delivery with less office visits.
4 – Decrease exacerbations: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients enrolled in a telehealth system with care management, experienced lower quarterly hospital admissions for COPD exacerbations during a three year program, compared with those how had regular treatment for COPD management. The study was published this February.
5 – Faster recovery: A study as demonstrated that an e-health intervention after gynecological surgery with detailed tailored pre and post-operative instructions on the resumption of work and daily activities, combined with tools to improve self-empowerment and communication with care providers and employer to identify recovery problems, could lead to a faster return to work with less pain.
6 – Improve weight loss: We had seen in the recent years that mobile apps had emerged to help us control or reduce our weight. But investigators from Baltimore, USA, had tested a smartphone self-monitoring tool for obese patients and they suggested that individuals in the intensive counseling plus self-monitoring smartphone group and less intensive counseling plus self-monitoring smartphone group tended to lose more weight than other groups. We can see that daily self-monitoring had helped those patients.
7 – Less anxiety for caregivers: In a randomized trial in coronary artery bypass graft surgery patients and their caregivers who received telehealth follow-up, showed greater improvements in anxiety levels (in female caregivers) from pre-surgery to three weeks after discharge, probably because caregivers felt more closer to their healthcare professionals.
