Telemedicine and Teleradiology - Essay Example

?Telemedicine and Teleradiology Telemedicine and Teleradiology Introduction Telemedicine is the provision of healthcare services over long distances, thus reaching far-flung and remote areas and be able to provide quality healthcare from resources having very high expertise and skills. Telemedicine utilizes both communication technology and computer technology. Telemedicine not only involves consulting healthcare professionals and patients over far distances but also involves making a diagnosis, providing treatment, giving advice during surgeries and other procedures, and even documenting medical history. Since the advent of the telephone, telemedicine has been in place, wherein the patient calls the doctor in case of a medical problem the doctor would be providing medical advice. Telemedicine can also be utilized in an emergency or critical care protocol wherein human lives are at stake and often vital decisions have to be made immediately by the healthcare professional. Telemedicine also involves providing education, training and awareness to the patient and to the healthcare professional. Though legal issues, liabilities, costs, technical and standards do act as limitations in the progress of telemedicine, governments, non-governmental and private organizations and developing protocols to be followed, and in the future there are chances that they could legal and technical developments could act as boosters rather than inhibitors of telemedicine. The very recent development in Information technology from across the globe has placed telemedicine on the cutting edge of technology (Pisacane 1995). Telemedicine is extremely useful for patients that reside in distant and isolated areas and can be virtually applied to any domain in health including clinical specialties, radiology, public health, dentistry, psychiatric, nursing, rehabilitation, etc. The medical care provided is more complete, accurate and comprehensive without the need for the patient or the practitioner spending on travel or wasting time on the same. With the current introduction of mobile technology and its application in healthcare, the professional can apply the technology almost from anywhere. Telemedicine can also be useful as a model for delivering homecare or telemonitoring. Through telemonitoring the healthcare professional can actively and round-the-clock monitor the patient. Besides, using telemedicine newer fields of medicine are in development such as remote surgery wherein the doctor can use technology and remotely perform surgery on a patient. Further using robotics, human errors can be avoided during surgery. For example, in patients suffering from prostate cancer, the robotic surgery performed ensures protection of the microscopic structures. Thus such patients are able to do normal sexual activity even after the surgery (Pisacane 1995). Teleradiology Teleradiology is a mode of transmitting and analyzing patient radiological images including CT, MRI, ultrasound, and X-rays using IT. It has grown at a much faster rate than any other field of telemedicine, and permits radiologists to provide their services to patients located virtually anywhere on earth. Through the use of teleradiology, radiologists are able to provide their services at almost any time of the day or night. A teleradiology setup would be using several resources including internet, computer systems, Local area network (LAN) or Wide area network (WLAN), specialized software to view the images and make diagnosis, databases to store and backup the images, input devices such as scanner, graphics tools such as voice processing and recognition, image compression technologies, etc. Besides, there are a huge set of regulations that have grown into radiology such as DICOM and HIPAA-Compliance. Teleradiology also provides a significant improvement in the quality of care at the hospital as it is an important plug in the provision of quality services in the hospital. The turnaround time for radiological images is significantly reduced using teleradiology (below 30 minutes in several cases). In this way, teleradiology has proven to be of much greater use than any other field of telemedicine, much beyond mere provision of services to distant requirements (Hospital for Special Surgery 2008). Technology required for Teleradiology As mentioned earlier, teleradiology requires huge amount of resources some are often very costly and may be difficult for smaller players to procure. The cost of such resources is very high and it would take a long time for the organization to obtain their ROI. A teleradiology setup would require hardware, software, database, scanners, printers, networking equipment, workstations and human resources. A database is needed to store the images that have been processed and significant efforts should be made to ensure that these images are adequately backed-up in case the main server collapses. For inputting the images, X-ray CCD scanners are needed, and for viewing the same workstations with high-resolution monitors are needed. The scanners should be connected to the central server or the achiever. The images have to be archived for the patient and to permit that connection with the Hospital information system would be needed. The radiologists and other specialists would also like to view the patient history and hence lays the need to integrate the PACS system with the HIS. The networking of various points in the hospital should permit transfer of the high-resolution images within a short span of time (greater than 1 Gb/s). Beyond these to integrate the various resources located in the teleradiology system is the workflow so that the various resources can interact (Karasti 1998). Strengths and weakness of teleradiology Teleradiology can improve the quality of care delivered either to the hospital or a distant setup. The productivity and efficiency of the system is improved and radiologists would find it easy to provide expertise radiological consultation to patients located almost anyway. In this way the skill set of the radiologist would be made best use of. This could potentially serve as an opportunity for hospitals to network themselves and provide expert radiological advice (Thrall 2007). However there are also certain risks associated with a teleradiology setup. As radiological examination may not be a complete way of examining the patient and making a diagnosis, there is always a chance of errors to occur. Hence, there may be a need to have follow-up reviews with the radiologist in case the clinical specialist needs greater support from the radiologist. Secondly, the quality of services provided by teleradiologists is always in doubt, and if the services are not reviewed periodically there are chances that it could deteriorate with time. Thirdly, teleradiology requires huge amount of resources that are very costly, and it may be very difficult for any organization to obtain the ROI immediately. Hence, organizations should carefully plan out the implementations of such systems (Thrall 2007). Rationale for using ‘tele’ mode in this specialty for delivery of healthcare services Teleradiology centers can provide a range of services not only to primary care centers but to also secondary and tertiary care centers. The process of teleradiology has developed as a business model and today it has been integrated in various systems across the world. The greatest rationale for using teleradiology is the significant improvement in the processes and the quality of care. The role of the radiologist would be improved and would be spending greater efforts in the patient’s process of care in the hospital (David, 2000). Bibliography David, J. H. (2000). ‘Teleradiology as a Foundation for an Enterprise-wide Health Care Delivery System.’ Radiographics, 20, 1137-1150. http://radiographics.rsna.org/content/20/4/1137.full Hospital for Special Surgery (2008). Teleradiology, Retrieved on March 30, 2012, from Web. http://www.hss.edu/conditions_teleradiology.asp Karasati, H. (1998). ‘The teleradiology system and changes in work practices.’ CMPB, 57, 69-78. http://oulu.academia.edu/HelenaKarasti/Papers/615250/The_teleradiology_system_and_changes_in_work_practices Pisacane, T. L. (1995). ‘Telemedicine: Health Care at a Distance.’ Johns Hopkins Apl Technical Digest, 16(4): 373-376. http://www.jhuapl.edu/techdigest/td/td1604/Pisacane.pdf Thrall, J. H. (2007). ‘Teleradiology Part II. Limitations, Risks, and Opportunities.’ Radiology, 244, 325-328. http://radiology.rsna.org/content/244/2/325.full Read More