My initial thoughts about telehealth and telemedicine were that it is centered around primary care and outpatient services rather than inpatient acute settings. I used to work at an urgent care where we would get our x-rays reviewed by an on-call radiologist using telemedicine. As far as acute care telemedicine, I was aware of tele sitters and people who monitor cardiac strips off site but I didn’t know how advanced the technology has become and how much it has been integrated at the bedside. I had never heard of a teleICU, but it was very impressive. I work at UMass Memorial, who recently started a “hospital at home” program that aims to give the same level to care to patients who are discharged through off site monitoring that they would get in a hospital setting. Initiates like tele-icu’s and “hospital at home” programs can help solve challenges facing our healthcare system like staffing shortages and staying up-to-date with the ever-increasing volume of knowledge.
Thinking to the pandemic, when there wasn’t enough PPE to go around and healthcare workers were concerned about working on the floor for their own safety and the safety of their loved ones, telehealth and telemedicine provided an alternative where patients could still get the experience and expertise that these people have without the same risk of exposure to communicable diseases.
If I’m ever in a unit where there is a team of professionals off-site I will be much more willing to use them as a resource. I am now more interested in keeping up with advances in computing and how it can be used in a clinical setting. The processing power of computers doubles every 18-24 months, so who knows where the technology will be in 15-20 years.
