For millennia, patients have had to accept whatever treatment a medical professional happened to foist upon them. Whether the medical professional happened to be a witch doctor in the Amazon or a scalpel-wielding Victorian physician eager to perform a frontal lobotomy, patients had little choice but to follow the doctor’s orders. Throughout history, there was very much an ‘us and them’ divide between doctors and patients. Doctors knew it all, patients knew nothing. This was very empowering for doctors, but disempowering for patients.

Telemedicine has leveled the playing field. Thanks to telemedicine, patients now have much more choice and involvement in their treatment. Telemedicine is empowering patients by giving them massively increased choice, and also opening up a world of potential learning and education that was previously closed off to them. Patients can now take charge of their own treatment and make choices for themselves with the help of doctors, medical professionals, and telemedicine apps.

Obviously, most patients are not fully qualified to make decisions about their medical treatment completely independently, but the fact that telemedicine has empowered patients by giving them far more choice, and far better sources of information than ever before, is surely a good thing.

Here are 6 ways in which telemedicine is empowering patients.

Telemedicine Gives Patients More Control Over Their Money

Telemedicine has many money-saving benefits. It allows patients to choose from a far larger pool of potential health care providers, enabling them to find the most cost-effective treatment. It also does away with the need to take a lot of time off work to travel to lengthy in-person consultations. The money that patients save by using telemedicine is hugely empowering. Having more money to pay off debt, increase savings, or buy goods and services that they desire or need is very empowering for patients.

Saving money (and time) is one of the biggest benefits of telemedicine.

Telemedicine Allows Patients More Choice of Who They Consult With

In days gone by, patients had to consult with whatever medical professional happened to be based nearest to their location. This often meant that patients had to make do with subpar doctors or facilities. It also meant that patients sometimes had to be treated by doctors they did not warm to. This lack of choice of who patients could deal with was very disempowering. Telemedicine has empowered patients by giving them a much better choice of which medical professionals they can be treated by.

Telemedicine Makes it Possible For Patients to Live in Remote Locations

Before telemedicine, many patients had no choice but to live in locations that were near to medical facilities, but otherwise unappealing. Many people had to live in big, overcrowded cities just to be near hospitals and medical facilities. Telemedicine has freed patients up big-time in this regard. Patients can now choose to live in much more remote locations far away from the nearest hospital or surgery. Having the ability to live in a peaceful wilderness or small, friendly village, while using telemedicine to meet their medical needs, is very empowering for patients.

Telemedicine Gives Patients More Choice Between Different Treatments

There are many ways to skin a cat. Exciting new medical treatments are being developed all the time that can meet the needs of patients much better than older, traditional treatments. Before the age of telemedicine, exciting new treatments were often unavailable to patients whose doctor was not up-to-date with the newest research. Telemedicine has empowered patients by enabling them to choose doctors in distant locations that offer groundbreaking new treatment options.

Want to travel the world, but still access health care? Enter telemedicine!

Telemedicine Gives Patients the Freedom to Travel the World

The ability to up sticks and travel the world is certainly very empowering. Telemedicine enables patients to do just that by giving them the option to consult with their physician or health care provider remotely, from anywhere in the world. Thanks to telemedicine, even people with chronic health conditions can explore the world safe in the knowledge that, should they need to, they can contact their doctor from any location. This is hugely empowering.

Telemedicine Gives Patients Their Time Back

Time is the most valuable resource there is. Traditional medicine often robs people of their precious time by requiring them to make long journeys to hospitals or surgeries and to wait for interminable hours in waiting rooms and ERs. Telemedicine empowers people by giving them far more control over their time. It allows patients to choose much less time-consuming methods of treatment, and therefore save plenty of hours with which they can do as they please.

Traditional medicine has a lot of side effects that are harmful to the environment. Telemedicine, on the other hand, makes the world a smaller and more efficient place, and this has a very positive effect on the environment.

Traditional medicine demands a lot of energy, mainly in the form of electricity. Traditional medicine requires large buildings and substantial physical infrastructure; it often necessitates that long journeys be made by road, rail, air, or sea; and it generates huge amounts of waste. The need to receive traditional medical treatment makes it essential for many people to live in large urban centers that cause great pollution to the environment.

Telemedicine has the potential to solve all of these harmful side effects of traditional medicine (at least to some extent). It makes travel less necessary; it reduces energy consumption; it decreases the need for large bricks-and-mortar facilities; it saves people time and money that can be dedicated to environmental projects. In all of these ways, telemedicine is much better for the environment than traditional medicine.

Here are 6 ways telemedicine can improve the environment.

Telemedicine Reduces the Need For Bricks-and-Mortar Medical Facilities

Physical infrastructure – such as hospitals, surgeries, roads, shops, cafes, and restaurants – is required to make traditional medicine work. All of this physical infrastructure takes up space, uses a vast amount of energy, and produces a ton of waste. Hospitals are often built on green-belt land. These giant structures often devour parkland and destroy ecosystems. Telemedicine makes a lot of this physical infrastructure unnecessary. Using telemedicine, people can consult with a doctor or any other type of medical professional remotely from the comfort of their own home. This makes physical infrastructure less necessary and therefore improves the environment.

The less need for physical infrastructure, the more room for green spaces full of life!

Telemedicine Means Hospitals and Surgeries Can Be Smaller

Not only is infrastructure less necessary, but the infrastructure that already exists is now being scaled back thanks to telemedicine. Buildings that were once needed for traditional medicine are being freed up and can now be used for housing and other purposes. This reduces the need to build new houses on green-belt land. This scaling back of infrastructure and recycling of buildings is very good for the environment.

Telemedicine Reduces the Need For Travel

Being able to consult with a medical professional anywhere in the country (or even the world) from the comfort of your own home makes traveling much less essential. Telemedicine hugely reduces the need to journey by road, rail, or plane to visit a doctor in person. Using traditional medicine, patients often have to make a long car journey to see their local physician. A lot of patients need to travel by air to see a specialist when their condition requires it. Travel by road and plane is very bad for the environment. Telemedicine improves the environment by reducing the amount that patients need to travel to receive medical treatment.

Telemedicine Enables People To Choose More Eco-Friendly Treatments

Telemedicine gives patients far more choice. Thanks to this increased choice patients can now select from a wider range of possible medical treatments. Some treatments are more eco-friendly than others. For example, many people are choosing to use medical marijuana, grown organically on sustainable facilities, instead of synthetic drugs concocted in huge chemical-spewing pharmaceutical plants. Telemedicine allows people to improve the environment by choosing eco-friendly treatments.

Accessing eco-friendly treatments through telemedicine, like medical marijuana, has a positive impact on the environment.

Telemedicine Allows People to Live in Eco-Friendly Locations

The fact that people can get their medical treatment needs met remotely using telemedicine means that they can now, more than ever before, choose to live in remote locations. Cities are often clogged and dirty places that do great damage to the environment. Spewing sewage, traffic fumes, and household waste, modern cities put great pressure on the planet’s ecosystem. The more these cities can be decongested, the better. Living in less crowded, more eco-friendly locations can have a very positive impact on the environment. It is easier to live sustainably in smaller rural locations. Telemedicine makes it possible to live outside of cities by making it easy to consult with medical professionals from any location, no matter how remote.

Telemedicine Saves Time and Money… Which Can Be Dedicated to Environmental Causes

Telemedicine saves patients a ton of time and money. These invaluable resources can be used to improve the environment in numerous ways. Money can be invested in green projects like solar and wind power, and time can be invested in community clean-ups, building green homes and buildings, joining environmentalist movements, and volunteering on green projects. When telemedicine saves people time and money that they then dedicate to green projects, telemedicine is having a very positive impact on the environment.

Stress has reached epidemic proportions in the world today. Even while standards of living are increasing across the board in most parts of the world, people are suffering from chronic stress seemingly more than ever. Social media addiction, ultra-demanding corporate work schedules, competition anxiety, rising personal debt – these are all stress-inducers that are common in the modern world. People are time-starved, money is tight, and “keeping up with the Joneses” feels like a stressful necessity for millions.

In this stressful modern world, any and all developments that can reduce stress are welcome. Telemedicine is one of these stress-reducing developments. Telemedicine saves time, saves money, increases patients’ choice, and makes it possible for people to live in calmer, less busy locations where life is slower and less stressful. Telemedicine has reduced stress levels for millions of people all over the world.

Here are 8 ways telemedicine can decrease stress.

Telemedicine Is Less Costly

Personal debt is a huge cause of stress in the modern world. Mounting personal debt eats away at a person’s peace of mind. Telemedicine saves people money by allowing them to choose the most cost-effective treatment options from a much larger pool of potential health care providers. It also makes it possible to not travel long distances to get medical treatment. The money that people save by using telemedicine instead of traditional medicine can be put towards paying off debt and increasing personal savings. These money-saving benefits can greatly decrease stress.

Money is one of the biggest causes of stress, so any money saved on medical appointments is a huge help.

Telemedicine Provides More Choice

Dealing with a medical professional who is not particularly appropriate to a patient’s needs can be stressful. When a patient uses traditional medicine, they have much less choice and so often have to deal with a health care professional that they don’t feel comfortable with or trust. With limited choice, people also often have to deal with health care professionals who are charging excessive prices. The increased choice that telemedicine provides means a patient can find the perfect medical professional to meet their specific needs. This increased choice can be a big stress-reliever for patients.

Telemedicine Saves a Lot of Time

In the modern world, time is often of the essence. People have very tight schedules and deviating from these can often lead to a stressful backlog of “to do”s. Telemedicine saves a lot of time because people can consult with doctors remotely in a tiny fraction of the time it would take them to visit a surgery for an in-person consultation. These time-saving benefits can save people a lot of stress.

Telemedicine Makes It Easier To Live In Remote, Peaceful Locations

Living in a big, bustling, intensely busy city can be very stressful. Being able to live in a smaller, more relaxed town or city, or even in a peaceful rural location, can hugely decrease a person’s stress levels. Telemedicine frees people from the necessity of living in a big urban area by allowing them to get their medical needs met remotely. Many people who use traditional medicine have no choice but to live near a major hospital. Using telemedicine allows people to live in much less stressful, “off-the-grid” locations.

Living in a less stressful location is much easier when you know you have access to telemedicine.

Telemedicine Reduces the Need For Stressful Surgery Visits

Queuing up in busy surgery waiting rooms or hospital ERs can be very stressful. Not only are these places often packed, stuffy, and uncomfortable, but they also tend to be hotbeds of germs and viruses. Telemedicine allows people to avoid waiting rooms and ERs for many medical conditions. In this way, it saves people a lot of stress.

Telemedicine Makes Life Less Stressful For Patients With Mobility Issues

For patients with mobility issues who require the use of disabled parking permits, telemedicine is a huge stress reliever. Getting to a surgery or hospital can be a difficult ordeal for people who use handicap parking. Telemedicine allows people with mobility issues to consult with health care professionals remotely. This saves people with mobility issues a lot of stress.

Telemedicine Means Less Time Off Work

Traditional medical treatment often requires patients to take a lot of time off work. This can be very stressful because it often means fewer wages. It also can strain relations between a patient and their boss. The fact that telemedicine reduces the amount of time that a patient will need to take off work is often a big stress reliever.

Telemedicine Provides Stress-Relieving Education to Patients

Stress and fear often stem from ignorance and a lack of understanding about the world and the nature of one’s problems. Knowledge is the antidote to this ignorance and therefore a great reducer of stress. Telemedicine provides plenty of information for patients, giving them the option to use telemedicine apps to educate themselves about their medical condition and feel more reassured and less stressed.

Being a new parent is very exciting, but it can also be stressful and hard work. Time and money become extra-valuable and scarce resources when there is a new baby to take care of. Telemedicine holds a vast amount of potential for new parents. The time-saving, money-saving and increased choice that telemedicine provides can come in extremely handy for people who are taking care of a new baby.

Here are seven benefits of telemedicine for new parents.

Telemedicine Allows Babies to Avoid Doctor’s Surgeries and Hospitals

Babies and toddlers are particularly vulnerable to picking up germs and viruses. Doctor’s surgery waiting rooms and hospital ERs are often hotbeds of germs and viruses. This can be especially problematic for babies, whose immune systems are still a little weaker and less robust. Keeping babies in relatively germ- and virus-free environments will make sure that they get sick as infrequently as possible. By using telemedicine, new parents can keep their babies out of doctor’s surgeries and ERs and away from the viruses and germs that linger there. This is a big benefit of telemedicine for new parents.

Keeping your new baby healthy and safe is your first priority as a new parent, and telemedicine can help you do that.

Telemedicine Provides Education For New Parents

Being a new parent throws up lots of new and unexpected challenges. It is crucial for a new parent to acquire the knowledge necessary to protect and nurture their child optimally during the baby’s formative early years. Conveniently, many telemedicine apps are full of interesting and important information for new parents. Apps such as Text4Baby provide pregnant women and new parents with a wealth of invaluable knowledge and information about being pregnant and becoming a new parent. Telemedicine apps have opened a whole world of learning and knowledge to new parents. This increased knowledge can hugely improve the lives of new parents and their children.

Telemedicine Saves New Parents Time

For new parents, time can be an extremely scarce resource. Things that were taken for granted in the past, such as a full night’s sleep and the chance to sit down and watch a TV show, become vanishingly rare treats! When taking care of a new baby, it can seem like every minute of the day is taken up by baby-related activities. This is often very exhausting for new parents, and anything that can save time is hugely helpful. Telemedicine saves massive amounts of time by doing away with the need to make time-consuming trips to the doctor’s surgery, hospital, or pharmacy. The time-saving that telemedicine provides is one of its greatest benefits for new parents.

Telemedicine Saves New Parents Money

Financial commitments are often huge for new parents. For many people, these financial commitments can put a major strain on their bank balance. Intelligent budgeting is very important for most new parents. Telemedicine provides big opportunities for new parents to save money by allowing them to choose the most economical and best-value medical professionals. Telemedicine also saves on gas and transport costs, because many consultations can be done online.

Most new parents are strapped for both cash and time, so the money-saving and time-saving benefits of telemedicine are extremely helpful.

Telemedicine Provides New Parents With More Choice

New parents are eager to get their babies and toddlers the best possible medical care that they can find. Whereas for most of human history, parents were very limited in which medical professionals they could get to treat their children, today they can choose from a much wider pool of doctors and specialists thanks to telemedicine. Telemedicine makes geography much less of a relevant factor, because new parents can consult with medical professionals who are based far from where they live. This increased choice offers huge benefits to new parents.

Telemedicine Improves New Parents’ Ability to Live in Remote Locations

Many new parents would prefer to bring their children up in remote and idyllic rural locations, far away from the negative influences and dangers of the big city. Growing up in the wilderness and playing freely in nature can be a beautiful, life-enhancing experience for children. Telemedicine makes it possible for new parents to bring up their children in remote locations because it is much easier to provide necessary medical treatment remotely, if and when it is required, using telemedicine apps and smart mobile technology.

Telemedicine Ensures The Best Medical Professionals Rise to the Top

The increased choice that telemedicine provides to new parents tends to make the market more competitive. This means that medical professionals who treat children are operating in a more demanding market. In this more competitive market, the cream tends to rise to the top. This is great news for new parents, because it means they can get their children treated by the best medical professionals in the business. Telemedicine increases competition amongst doctors and ensures that the most talented are easy to identify, which is extremely beneficial for new parents.

Telemedicine is changing the lives of people in numerous positive ways. Many different segments of society are benefiting from using telemedicine in place of more traditional forms of medicine.

One group that is benefiting particularly well is senior citizens. On average, older people tend to require more medical treatment than younger people. So older people can benefit from using telemedicine in particularly profound and life-changing ways.

Here are eight ways telemedicine can improve the lives of senior citizens.

Telemedicine Allows Senior Citizens to Consult From Home

Using telemedicine, a senior citizen can consult with a medical professional of their choice from the comfort of their own home. Being able to perform many consultations from home using telemedicine means that senior citizens have less need to travel to doctors’ surgeries and hospitals. Being able to have their medical consultations done from home can seriously improve the lives of senior citizens.

Telemedicine Gives Senior Citizens More Choice

Telemedicine opens up a whole universe of choice to senior citizens. Whereas before, when using traditional medicine, a senior citizen’s choice would be limited to the small selection of medical professionals that happen to operate in their area, now they can choose to consult with doctors and medical specialists that are based in any location, within the United States or beyond. This vastly increased level of choice is a big improvement in the lives of senior citizens.

Telemedicine offers so many benefits for seniors, including increased choice and the ability to save time and money.

Telemedicine Saves Senior Citizens Time

Most senior citizens are retired after having done many decades of hard work. Senior citizens’ time is precious and they want to enjoy their hard-earned retirement years as much as possible. Telemedicine is a huge time-saver. This means that senior citizens can spend more time enjoying life and doing things they want to do.

Telemedicine Saves Senior Citizens Money

Living on a finite pension often requires being frugal. Money can be tight for senior citizens, and medical bills can seriously eat into a person’s pension pot. Telemedicine gives senior citizens the option to shop around and find the best value medical care available. This ability to save money can be a huge improvement in the life of a senior citizen.

Telemedicine Encourages Senior Citizens to Become More Tech-Savvy

Technology is improving at an exponential rate. People who don’t manage to keep up-to-date with modern technology can be left behind and miss out on the awesome benefits that it brings. Senior citizens often find it more difficult to keep up-to-date with modern tech because they have been doing things ‘the old way’ for so long. Telemedicine can be the impetus older people need to learn about modern tech. In order for a senior citizen to enjoy the time-saving and money-saving benefits of telemedicine, they need to have a working knowledge of the internet, smartphones, and tablets. The knowledge they gain can then be translated into other areas. Using telemedicine can be an excellent learning experience for senior citizens.

Engaging with technology through using telemedicine services is a great benefit for senior citizens.

Telemedicine Means Senior Citizens Can Spend Less Time in Doctors’ Waiting Rooms and ERs

Doctors’ waiting rooms and hospital emergency rooms tend to be populated by various germs and viruses. An enclosed space full of sick people is not a healthy or fun place to hang out. Senior citizens are often more susceptible to these germs and viruses than younger people due to their weaker immune systems. Older people can often leave a doctor’s waiting room sicker than when they arrived. Telemedicine means that for many conditions, a senior citizen can avoid spending any time at all in a doctor’s waiting room or hospital ER, and this can vastly improve their health and quality of life.

Telemedicine Is Great For Senior Citizens With Mobility Issues

Senior citizens tend to suffer from mobility issues more than any other segment of the population. Medical conditions that hamper mobility such as arthritis are more common among senior citizens. Telemedicine makes it possible for senior citizens with mobility issues to travel less and to get their medical consultations done from the comfort of their own home. 

Telemedicine Allows Senior Citizens to Explore the World

After long decades of being stuck in one location due to career, work, and family commitments, many senior citizens would love to travel and explore the world. Telemedicine allows senior citizens to get their medical needs met remotely. This means that they can finally fulfil their dreams of seeing exotic regions of the country or world. Telemedicine allows senior citizens to be much more location-independent, and this can mean a huge improvement in their lives.

With levels of private debt in the United States sitting at worryingly high levels, people need to save money now more than ever. Americans need to budget, and many need to tighten their belts. Many economic forecasters predict that with increased longevity and low savings rates, there may be a pension crisis looming. Millions of people may be heading towards an old age in which their pension pots will not support a comfortable lifestyle. A lot of Americans could end up having to do paid work far beyond traditional retirement age, and perhaps even until they die. In this climate, money-saving has to be a priority. Medical bills are a particularly huge drain on the finances of millions of Americans – but fortunately, the benefits of telemedicine have arrived on the scene, and just in the nick of time!

Telemedicine is often a much cheaper treatment option than traditional medicine. Using telemedicine, a patient can save big bucks by choosing the best value medical treatment from a much larger pool of options. Telemedicine can also save people money on transport and travel, as well as allowing them to not take unnecessary time off work. Telemedicine has come to the rescue of many financially hard-up Americans who need all the money-saving help they can get.

Here are five money-saving benefits of telemedicine.

Telemedicine Provides More Choice

The more options a consumer has, the better price they are almost certain to get for a service. Telemedicine provides patients with much more choice than ever before. Patients can now choose medical professionals in different localities, cities, and even countries. One of the biggest benefits of telemedicine is that it allows patients to shop around and find the best possible value. The fact that customers can consult with doctors anywhere in the world is forcing medical professionals, in general, to be more competitive with their pricing. Telemedicine gives patients much more choice, and this increased choice can provide massive money-saving benefits.

When you have to make every penny count, having the option to use telemedicine services can be a real life-saver.

Telemedicine Decreases Travel Expenses

Traveling to and from medical consultations can cost a lot of money. People often need to consult with specialist doctors that are located far away – in different towns, cities, or even states. Traveling to and from an in-person medical consultation costs money, either in gas and vehicle maintenance or in public transport costs. Often a person will need to fly for a number of hours to get to the location where a specialist is located. That’s where another of the benefits of telemedicine comes in: it allows patients to consult with medical professionals in any location remotely using telecommunications technology. Being able to consult with a doctor from the comfort of your own home is much more economical and saves a lot of money in travel expenses.

Telemedicine Means Less Time Off Work

Visiting a medical professional in-person is a time-consuming undertaking. When travel times and queuing at the surgery are taken into account, a visit to a medical professional can take many hours, and sometimes even a whole day. When an in-person consultation takes this long it often means that the patient needs to take time off work, even if their medical condition does not actually necessitate any time off. This time off work often means a loss of earnings. One of the greatest benefits of telemedicine is that it allows people to save a lot of time by consulting with a medical professional remotely. This means it also saves people money by making it less necessary for them to take forced time off work.

There are so many benefits of telemedicine services, not least the greatly reduced expenses that can help you save money on your health care.

Telemedicine Breaks Up Expensive Local Monopolies

Telemedicine opens up the market. In times gone by, many localities were served by only one or a small few medical practitioners. This meant that the more unscrupulous doctors could charge higher fees because their patients had no choice but to pay them. Patients in small towns were often at the mercy of a monopoly, duopoly, or cabal. Telemedicine has made this type of unfortunate situation all but impossible. Telemedicine gives patients such a wide range of choice that they can easily take their business elsewhere if their local doctor is charging too much. This means that, in practice, no local doctor can afford to charge too much. By breaking up local monopolies, telemedicine has saved a lot of people a lot of money.

Telemedicine Is Getting Cheaper All the Time

Not only does telemedicine allow for all of the aforementioned money-saving opportunities, but it also is getting cheaper and cheaper in and of itself. Modern technological devices are getting cheaper as the technology becomes more advanced and easier to mass-produce. Smartphones and tablets are cheaper now than ever before. There are myriad high-quality telemedicine apps vying for the public’s attention, and this fierce competition drives prices lower and lower. The technology space in general, and the telemedicine space in particular, are highly competitive. Some of the best and brightest minds on Earth are working hard to develop the most cost-effective and best value technologies and apps. This is wonderful news for the consumer. Telemedicine is getting cheaper all the time, and this rapid progress brings excellent money-saving benefits to patients.

Telemedicine is one of the great inventions of recent decades. This new form of medicine is improving the lives of millions of people in numerous ways. One of the major ways in which telemedicine makes the lives of patients better is that it hugely improves their choices when it comes to health care.

Here are six ways telemedicine improves a patient’s range of choice.

Geographic Location

Geography and distance matter less than ever before thanks to the advent of telemedicine. It is now easy for patients to choose to consult with physicians in far-off locations using telemedicine apps. Telemedicine allows patients to have consultations with medical professionals in distant parts of the country or even the world. The fact that geography and distance are now so much less of an impediment means that patients have a tremendously wider range of choice of which medical practitioners they consult with. Telemedicine has made the world a much smaller place.

Money Saving

Telemedicine affords patients far more scope for money-saving. When using conventional medicine, patients are likely to need to pay more because they only have access to a relatively small number of medical professionals. Telemedicine opens the market up and allows patients to choose from a far wider selection of medical professionals. A market operates best when there are no barriers to entry and competition is fierce. When providers of medical treatment are operating in a highly competitive market, they are forced to provide the best service possible for the most economical price. The healthy competition that telemedicine fosters gives patients a far wider choice and makes money-saving easier than ever.

Saving money on health care is made easier through the advent of telemedicine.

Rare Treatments

Using traditional medicine is inherently limiting in terms of the types of treatment it leaves open to a patient. When a person uses telemedicine, they have a far wider range of choices of what types of treatment they would like to avail of. This wider list of possible options includes rare, novel, and experimental treatments. Rare treatments are, by their very nature, only available from a few sources. Many groundbreaking types of medical treatment are only offered by a small handful of specialist doctors. Often a rare and experimental treatment is the best possible option for a patient. Telemedicine allows people to avail of rare and experimental treatments much more easily.

Time Saving

Before the advent of telemedicine, receiving medical treatment was often a very time-consuming undertaking. People had no choice but to travel long distances, wait in waiting rooms, attend multiple in-person consultations, visit pharmacies again and again, and generally devote tons of precious time to the business of receiving medical treatment. Telemedicine has changed all this. Thanks to telemedicine, patients now have the ability to choose treatment methods that are far less time-consuming, such as remote consultations. Telemedicine makes long journeys to hospitals and surgeries far less necessary in many cases; it also makes it easy to send test results over the internet. Patients have more time-saving options than ever before now thanks to telemedicine.

Telemedicine saves time for both patients and medical professionals alike.

Avoidance of ERs and Surgeries

Prior to telemedicine exploding onto the scene, patients were forced to spend long hours queuing up in emergency rooms and doctor’s surgeries, often for quite minor injuries and ailments. Before telemedicine, there was simply no option but to report to ERs and surgeries and waste precious time waiting to be seen by a doctor. ERs and waiting rooms tend to be hothouses of germs and viruses, and many a patient has left one of these places sicker than when they arrived! Telemedicine has changed this situation for the better. Telemedicine has made it possible to perform a lot of medical consultations that previously would have required an in-person visit remotely from the comfort of your own sick bed. Having the choice to not make the time-consuming trek to a germ-filled ER or surgery has hugely improved the lives of many patients.

Work Schedule

It used to be the case that when a person got ill to the extent that they required a visit to the doctor, they would almost certainly need to take a day off work. Even if a person was feeling good enough to work, a doctor’s appointment often meant they would need to use up a precious “sick day.” This was an unfortunate situation. Very often, the only thing necessitating that a person take the day off was the fact that they had to attend a time-consuming doctor’s appointment. Thanks to telemedicine, this situation has changed for the better. Telemedicine consultations can now be done so quickly that if a patient desires to attend work on the same day, they easily can. This gives patients the choice to stay home from work if they really need to, but also to attend work if they would prefer to do so.

Telemedicine has become hugely popular in the United States. It is improving the lives of a vast amount of people. But not everybody is availing of it yet. However, the number of people using telemedicine is increasing all the time, and surely it is only a matter of time before everybody uses telemedicine in one form or another.

Here are seven reasons some people don’t use telemedicine… yet.

Some people are still unaware of telemedicine’s existence

Despite its recent explosion in popularity, many people who do not have a finger on the pulse of modern technological advances are still unaware that telemedicine is a viable option for them. With a busy family life and career, it can be difficult for many people to find the time to stay up-to-date with cutting-edge developments in modern technology. This is unfortunate and ironic, because when people discover telemedicine and begin to use it, it usually saves them a ton of time – time they could spend educating themselves on the wonders of modern technology! This lack of awareness will gradually go away as more and more people become avid telemedicine users and spread the word amongst their friends and family.

Telemedicine might seem like a daunting concept to older people who don’t have a solid understanding of technology.

There is still a widespread lack of understanding of technology

Many people who did not grow up using technology find modern telecommunication devices such as smartphones and tablets awfully confusing. Many baby boomers believe that using telecommunications technology is more difficult than it actually is, so they are resistant to attempting to learn about it. This lack of understanding of technology prevents people from using telemedicine. This issue will go away as devices become more and more intuitive and user-friendly and as more people cotton on to the overwhelming benefits that come from being at least modestly techno-literate.

Some people have a distrust of technology

Technophobia is a very real thing. Especially when it comes to their health, many people still believe that technology is unreliable, risky, and error-prone. This means that people are hesitant to use telemedicine and would rather stay with what they know. This distrust will slowly filter out of the population as people realize that their wellbeing, health, and safety are already thoroughly dependent on modern technology, and that, in reality, humans are far more prone to error than machines.

The U.S. still has inconsistent broadband availability

According to broadband mapping, many areas of the United States lag well behind the average in terms of broadband speed and price. Internet access and speeds still vary dramatically across the nation. For people who live in areas with inconsistent, overly expensive, or slow broadband, telemedicine is sometimes not a viable option. This problem will soon be overcome as broadband technology improves and companies vie to outdo each other by providing faster and faster connections to every region in the country.

Many people prefer the sense of trust embedded in face-to-face interactions with medical professionals.

Some people prefer face to face communication

It is a natural human instinct to desire face-to-face communication and connection, especially in times of stress. Reassurance is often more effective when given face-to-face. While telemedicine may be cheaper, less time-consuming, and less error-prone, people still place a very high value on in-person communication and the feeling it gives them. This desire for face-to-face communication, especially in times of stress, is not going to leave human beings anytime soon (and surely we wouldn’t want it to), but people will become more willing to forgo it when it becomes common knowledge than telemedicine, while often being less personable, is actually a more efficient way to acquire the best medical treatment available.

There are still limitations to telemedicine technology

While communications technology, and along with it telemedicine technology, is improving at an exponential rate, there are still many limitations. Many medical conditions are still not well suited to being treated remotely using telemedicine. It is still necessary to visit emergency rooms and doctor’s surgeries for many kinds of medical conditions and ailments. This will certainly remain the case for the foreseeable future. However, as technology improves, more conditions will become treatable remotely using telemedicine.

People still feel loyalty to their local family doctors

Many Americans have been visiting the same trusty, friendly family physician for decades, and so they feel a strong sense of loyalty. This is a nice thing. But it is hard to know if it will continue in perpetuity as telemedicine grows in stature and it becomes hard to argue that using telemedicine is not the most efficient way to get medical conditions treated. Will people’s sense of loyalty trump their desire to be as healthy as possible and to live as long as possible? It’s hard to imagine that this sense of loyalty is limitless. There will surely come a time when the case for telemedicine is just too strong to ignore.

While breakthroughs in medical knowledge have been impressively (and wonderfully!) common over the past few hundred years, the way in which medical consultations have been carried out has stayed rather similar throughout this time. Doctors have been treating their patients face-to-face inside their treatment rooms for most of medical history. This has often meant that patients have needed to travel large distances to see a doctor. It also meant that a doctor’s potential patient list was very limited by geography.

But all of this has changed over the past two decades. With the advent of super-fast internet and super-powerful mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, a new way of administering medical treatment has arrived on the scene and changed the medical landscape almost beyond recognition.

Telemedicine has made many things possible today that would have been beyond the dreams of even the most wildly imaginative futurists and sci-fi writers from recent history!

The telemedicine scene is bubbling with innovation and is a truly fascinating space to watch right now. Here are seven ways telemedicine is changing the medical landscape.

Patients Have Far More Choice

Telemedicine has given patients much more choice in which medical professionals they consult with. A patient can choose to be treated by a doctor who is based in another city, state, or even on the other side of the world if they wish. Whereas before patients could only deal with medical professionals located relatively near to them, it is now possible for somebody to be treated by a doctor located a vast distance away. This is a big change for the better in the medical landscape.

ER waiting times are being reduced thanks to telemedicine.

Hospital Emergency Rooms Are Much Less Crowded

Thanks to telemedicine, a lot of medical conditions that are relatively minor but would still have landed somebody in an ER can now be treated remotely. The fact that a lot of conditions that would have required an ER visit in the past are now being treated using telemedicine means that ERs have become less clogged up. This is a profound change for the better, as it means that seriously ill patients who really do need treatment at an ER can be taken care of more quickly and more efficiently than ever before.

Many Medical Consultations Are Much More Time-Efficient

Throughout human history, receiving medical treatment tended to be very time-consuming. Traveling to doctors’ surgeries, queuing up, repeat appointments… All of these things took up a lot of time. This has changed dramatically since the advent of telemedicine. Medical treatment is now far more time-efficient. Travel times have been reduced (in many cases to zero) and queuing in a doctor’s waiting room is now unnecessary in many instances. Telemedicine has made receiving medical treatment much less time-consuming than ever before.

Less Competitive Medical Professionals Are Going Out of Business

Due to the fact that telemedicine allows patients to give their business to medical practitioners in any distant corner or the country or even world, doctors can no longer afford to be lazy and to rely on mere geographical proximity to provide them with a customer base. In today’s telemedicine free market, competition is rife. The best doctors get more and more patients, and other doctors see their businesses die. This is a great thing for patients and the medical industry on the whole.

Tech-savvy medical professionals are leading the way thanks to the advent of telemedicine.

Medical Professionals Are Needing To Be More Tech-Savvy

Telemedicine is developing and improving at a rapid pace. This means that medical professionals are having to study hard to keep up with the technological innovation taking place. Not only do doctors need to keep up-to-date with advancements in medical knowledge, they also need to be highly tech-savvy. This results in an increased workload for medical professionals. But it is surely a good thing for patients, as doctors become more and more highly trained and au fait with the cutting edge of human tech knowledge.

Medical Professionals Can Operate Successful Practices Outside of Major Hub Locations

No longer do medical professionals, especially those who specialize in elective procedures, need to set up their clinics in main urban hubs, such as New York, Chicago, L.A., or Houston, in order to attract patients. Thanks to telemedicine, it is now possible for a doctor to operate from a smaller, more remote location and still attract a lot of clients simply by doing a lot of their consultations (and promotion) online.

Certain Medical Industry Jobs Are Being Lost

Telemedicine is resulting in some medical industry jobs becoming obsolete. This is unfortunate for the people who lose their jobs, but it may well prove to be good for consumers and the industry as a whole as treatment becomes more efficient, more streamlined, and more effective overall.

Telemedicine – the marriage of medicine and modern telecommunications technology – is taking the world by storm. More and more people are availing of this new and groundbreaking form of medical treatment. There are lots of great advantages to choosing telemedicine over traditional medicine. One of the biggest advantages is the huge amount of time a person can save by using telemedicine.

Telemedicine tends to be far more time-efficient than any other type of medical treatment. It can save people hours, and often literally days, worth of time! Here are six reasons telemedicine is such a huge timesaver.

Telemedicine Gives Patients a Vast Amount of Choice, Right at Their Fingertips

Telemedicine allows people to save a huge amount of time by searching for the most appropriate medical services for them from the comfort of their own home, via the internet. In the past, finding the right doctor to treat your particular medical condition was often akin to a very time-consuming search for a needle in a haystack, but today telemedicine allows medical professionals to operate in a digital space that is extremely easily and quickly accessible to anyone with a computer and internet connection. It now takes less time than ever before to find the right doctor for your specific needs using telemedicine.

Telemedicine Cuts Down the Need to Travel One of the most time-consuming aspects of traditional medical treatment was the travel involved. Even for a minor medical condition traveling to the local doctor’s surgery can be quite a time-consuming undertaking. For patients who need to see a specialist often a long trip to another city, state, or even country is required. Telemedicine has made it possible to have a consultation with a medical professional anywhere in the world remotely without having to leave your home. This means that long and time-consuming journeys are now far less necessary than in the past, and this is a huge timesaver.

No more getting stuck in traffic on the way to the doctor’s surgery!

Telemedicine Does Away With the Need to Queue in a Doctor’s Waiting Room

A huge time-sink in traditional medicine was the obligatory wait in the doctor’s waiting room. Queues can be painfully long in doctors’ surgeries, especially during busy seasons such as winter, when colds and flus are most common. Queuing in a doctor’s waiting room is most people’s idea of “dead time” – it’s difficult to be productive as you sit there marinating in other people’s germs (no matter how riveting the selection of out-of-date magazines happens to be!). Telemedicine has improved this situation in two major ways. Firstly, it has made it much less necessary to visit a doctor’s surgery for many people, much of the time. People with minor illnesses and ailments can have their needs met using a telemedicine consultation, so they save all the time they otherwise would have wasted queuing. Secondly, since many people are getting to stay away from the surgery altogether, for people who do need to attend in-person, the queues now tend to be much smaller.

Telemedicine Facilitates Instantaneous Transmission Of Medical Information

In the past, time would be wasted while results of tests would be mailed around in hard copy form. Thankfully, those days are now gone. Telemedicine has made it possible to send advanced test results from doctor to doctor, from hospital to hospital, and from both doctor and hospital to patient. This high-fidelity, instantaneous transmission of medical information has resulted in huge time savings for patients and medical professionals alike.

Technology goes a long way in helping to reduce time spent transmitting medical data.

Telemedicine Allows Patients to Choose the Most Efficient Medical Professionals

Telemedicine opens up a vast market of choice for patients and consumers of medical and surgical services. Not all medical professionals are created equal, and therefore some operate at a higher level of efficiency than others. Telemedicine allows patients to save a lot of precious time by choosing to consult with the most competent, skilled, and time-efficient medical professionals in the world. This results in huge time savings for patients.

Telemedicine Reduces Emergency Room Waiting Times

Everybody has a story about somebody they know attending an emergency room and having to wait some hilariously huge amount of time to receive some relatively minor treatment. Many of these tales are probably exaggerated for comic effect, yet there is no doubt that ER waiting times over the past few decades have often tended to be quite long in many parts of the country. But telemedicine has come to the rescue in this area, too! ER waiting times are decreasing as more and more people are able to stay away from ERs because they are getting their ailments sorted out via telemedicine. This means that queues in ERs are shorter, waiting times are subsequently decreasing… and precious time is being saved!