With advancements in technology, gone are the days when you would need to rush to the doctor anytime you had a medical question or concern. Today, you can video chat with your physician from the comfort of your home – saving you lots of time (and money!). So, why should telemedicine only work for humans? In fact, using telehealth measures to help care for your pet is starting to get even easier. There are several companies that are changing the game by introducing veterinary telemedicine services to pet owners. Interested in finding out how to help better care for your furry friend with telemedicine? Read on for more info!

Anytime your pet starts showing symptoms – whether it’s limping from a fall or vomiting after eating something they shouldn’t have – you’re left wondering if you should pack them up in the car and head straight to your vet’s office. Some animals can get extremely agitated when they have to be transported in a carrier or take a ride in the car, so even getting them to the office can be a hassle. If you live in a rural area, the aspect of traveling to a nearby vet’s office can be even more challenging. Then, once you’re at the office, you’ll likely spend quite a bit of time in the waiting room. After meeting with your vet, you’re probably going to face having to pay an expensive bill (whether your pet needed much treatment or not). Needless to say, the whole experience can end up making you feel overwhelmed and frustrated.

Who said the conveniences of telemedicine can only be enjoyed by humans?! Pet care is the newest entry to the realm of telemedicine.

Luckily, there are several companies who are starting to revolutionize how you can get help from a vet. If you live in the San Francisco Bay area in California, you can get access to Fuzzy Pet Health Connect, a telemedicine service that works with a smartphone app to give you access to an on-demand vet 24/7. It works by letting you send text, pictures, and videos to a licensed vet at any time. They’ll respond in real-time with detailed instructions and advice on how to care for your pet and their particular problem. They’ll also advise you if they think your pet should visit an in-person vet for the best treatment. Even if you have questions that are not medical, Fuzzy Pet Health can help by offering advice on behavior or training issues too. The best part is that it’s only $10 a month!

In an interview with TechCrunch, Fuzzy Pet Health co-founder Eric Palm says that this kind of on-demand help can allow for pet owners’ questions to be answered quickly, without needing to visit a vet in person. “It turns out that 80 percent of the time when people think there’s an emergency issue, it’s not actually critical. We can triage – we can share pictures and videos, and that’s really helpful.”

But these plans aren’t just for medical emergencies. They also include an annual supply of flea, tick, and heartworm preventative medications and core vaccines. You can even get diagnostics for heartworm and fecal testing every six months and microchipping for your pet. One of the plans even includes two wellness checkups that are conducted in your home! If your pet is older or has chronic conditions, one plan option offers blood panels every six months and a cold laser therapy treatment, so no matter what your pet needs, they’ll be taken care of.

Thanks to telemedicine, concerns you would once have made a vet trip to get checked out can now be dealt with from your home.

Fuzzy Pet Health is seeing great results with the service. Co-founder and lead vet Dr. Robert Trimble said in a statement, “The average pet parent goes to the vet only 1.6 times a year, while our members get in touch with us roughly once a month. We’re excited to expand telemedicine across the country, and provide pet parents the peace of mind and education that come with easy and unlimited access to high-quality care.” While the service isn’t widely available yet, the company is thinking of expanding to other major cities like Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago.

There are other companies, like Petriage, that also use a mobile app to give pet owners direct access to expert vet advice. If you have a good working relationship with your vet, there are sites like Televet that offer direct communication with the vet your pet is already seeing.

Telemedicine for pets is pretty new, and there’s definitely room to grow. At this time, there are laws in most states that say that telehealth vet services can’t diagnose or prescribe medications without in-person vet visits. There aren’t these types of laws for human health care, so hopefully, lawmakers will see how helpful and convenient these services are and do away with these restrictions. Palm says that there is progress already being made. “Each state has its own Veterinary Medical Board, and there are active discussions on most of these boards on how to relax the rules around telemedicine,” Palm states.

So, as these services grow more popular, you’ll be able to take care of most of your vet business through convenient, time and money-saving mobile apps and video chats, no matter where you’re living.

There is a clear solution to helping the U.S. population become healthier. With advancements in technology, telemedicine is quickly becoming the answer for more accessible care, cheaper costs, and more effective treatments. There are countless reasons why telemedicine can help with patient care, and even more why these options could benefit the public at large by going mainstream.

Congress passed a federal budget earlier this year that allows for a major expansion of telemedicine benefits for Medicare patients (including those with chronic conditions). Hopefully, this will encourage further steps in the future that support telemedicine measures. Increased access to telemedicine options means that doctors can better treat their patients with a variety of conditions, including diabetes, obstetrics, behavioral health issues, and more. Here’s a look at the reasons why it’s crucial for telemedicine to be made even more available to U.S. citizens.

Bringing telemedicine to the mainstream could have many benefits for health care in the U.S.

1. Better access to health care, regardless of location

Before the advent of telemedicine, patients were forced to limit their care to their local doctors. Those who lived in rural areas were often unable to receive proper care simply because of their location. However, with telemedicine options (which include remote video chats with physicians), all patients can have access to the treatment they need, without having to worry about getting themselves to a distant doctor’s office or hospital. Telemedicine can help ensure that every individual has access to health care, no matter where they’re living.

2. More access to specialists

In recent years, telemedicine options have started to allow patients to get opinions from specialists in any location (no matter how far from the patient’s residence). Treatment options are no longer relegated to whichever doctor is closest. This is an especially great benefit for people who live in remote areas or who have rare conditions that cannot be treated by local physicians. The best possible specialist to help with treatment is now always available through telemedicine communications.

3. Lowered health care costs

Telemedicine options are often cheaper for patients because doctors don’t have to charge for office fees, and patients don’t have to pay for transportation to get to an office. Additionally, aside from patient costs, telemedicine can also lower health care costs in general, which can help make health care more affordable for everyone.

Getting treatment during flu season could be made much easier through telemedicine.

4. Better care during flu season

The past several years have seen pretty serious flu outbreaks in the U.S. Telemedicine can help provide better care by allowing for ill patients to connect with physicians from their homes (through their smartphones, tablets, or computers). Some drugstores even provide kiosks that can connect patients with medical help without them having to go to a hospital. Instead of filling up emergency rooms (and risking infecting more people), patients can be treated without having to leave their homes.

5. Increased access to eye health options

Many health care companies are using telemedicine to help provide better access to eye doctors. The NewYork-Presbyterian company provides a tele-ophthalmology mobile unit that travels around some of New York City’s less served neighborhoods. Medical staff, equipped with state-of-the-art imaging devices, are able to provide screenings for eye diseases and vision issues to a variety of individuals. Patients are then able to chat in real-time with an ophthalmologist through a video screen. These types of programs can help individuals get proper eye care, which they might not otherwise have access to.

6. More tools to fight strokes

Telemedicine can also help to better diagnose and treat strokes. In order to stave off lifelong disability or death, strokes must be diagnosed and treated as quickly as possible. There are companies like NewYork-Presbyterian with Telestroke Initiatives that connect specialists immediately to patients through live videoconferencing. The initiative also works to have brain scans taken from the ambulances, which are then delivered digitally to the specialists at the hospital. This helps to get the patient started on the right protocol immediately, which could be extremely valuable to a stroke patient. If other companies instituted initiatives like this one, many more patients could benefit.

In-person doctor’s visits will always exist, but telemedicine can help take some of the pressure off for both doctors and patients.

7. Spend less time waiting

Instead of spending tons of time in a doctor’s office waiting room or the lobby of a hospital, telemedicine options allow patients to set up appointments directly with a physician (which means no waiting time). Some programs are setting up options within hospitals’ emergency departments, where patients can consult with a doctor through a video chat – this can result in a decrease in waiting from two to three hours to 35 to 40 minutes.

8. Less crowded ERs

With more people using telemedicine options, emergency rooms will be less crowded (and your wait time at an ER will be much shorter). People who would normally head to the ER can instead consult a physician from their home. This means that people who come to the hospital with life-threatening or very serious injuries or illnesses won’t have to wait as long and can get treated much more quickly.

All of these reasons lead to the conclusion that telemedicine not only benefits the individual patient, but also the country’s health care as a whole. Although there will still always be a need for in-person doctor’s visits, telemedicine options can help revolutionize and improve our health care system.

Telemedicine has been growing in popularity in a big way over the past decade. With the advent of super-fast internet and super-powerful personal mobile devices, it has become possible to use telemedicine to meet more and more different types of medical needs remotely. Due to the rise of telemedicine, there has been a decrease in the need for people to use their local doctor’s surgeries. Today, illnesses that would have necessitated a visit to your local doctor in bygone years can be treated remotely using telemedicine.

Will telemedicine ultimately lead to the end of the local doctor’s surgery? It’s an interesting question. But the answer seems, as yet, unknowable. Telemedicine offers many big advantages over the local doctor’s surgery. But there are also some advantages that the local doctor’s surgery currently holds over telemedicine, and it’s hard to know if telemedicine will develop to the point where it catches up in these areas.

In this article, we will suggest some arguments for and against the motion that telemedicine will ultimately lead to the end of the local doctor’s surgery.

By necessity, most of the points in this article are speculation, as the future is (as always) impossible to predict with certainty.

There are arguments both for and against the idea that telemedicine will render physical doctor’s surgeries obsolete.

For:

Technology Is Improving Exponentially

Advances in technology are constant and relentless. Technological advances sweep humanity along with them. It’s often a case of “adapt or die (or at least become obsolete)”. Technology is sure to reach a point where telemedicine offers a service that is so efficient, so hyper-effective, so completely perfect, that the service offered at the local doctor’s surgery will never be able to compete.

Telemedicine Is a Huge Time Saver

As populations grow and cities become more crowded and hectic, people have busier schedules and less time to waste. Telemedicine already makes medical consultations much quicker, and as telemedicine technology improves, the time savings will only become more dramatic. Soon, a trip to the local doctor’s surgery will seem like an unforgivably uneconomical use of time. This could result in the local doctor’s surgery going the way of the dinosaurs.

The Potential For Human Error Will Become an Unacceptable Risk

As technology gets quicker, smarter, and more advanced, it will become far more reliable and less error-prone than human beings. When technology reaches the point at which it is much less likely to make a mistake than any human, then going to a doctor’s surgery to have a consultation with a flesh-and-blood doctor may come to been seen as a risk not worth taking when something as important as the health of yourself or your children is at stake. Telemedicine will become better as technology becomes better, and when it reaches a point of near-perfect reliability, the local doctor’s surgery could easily come to be considered a “dangerous” place.

Cost Differences

Our smartphones contain a computer more powerful than the computer that took Neil Armstrong’s spaceship to the moon. As technology advances, it becomes easier and cheaper to mass-produce incredibly advanced machines. Soon we will have such advanced technology at our disposal for such a cheap price that telemedicine services will cost us very little. When the cost difference between visiting your local doctor’s surgery and using a telemedicine app becomes large enough, nobody will use their local doctor’s surgery anymore.

Certain treatments can only be delivered in person, not through telemedicine.

Against:

People Inherently Prefer Face-to-Face Communication

It’s in our DNA to enjoy and prefer face-to-face communication. When it comes to issues as important as health, many people will always prefer the reassuring experience of being treated in-person by their friendly local doctor. Thoroughly hardwired for in-person contact as we are, it is very possible that some people will never fully trust technology when it comes to health. And of course, mobile electronic devices do not give lollipops to anxious toddlers who have come down with mumps! The fact that humans value a personal touch so highly may mean there will always be a place for the local doctor’s surgery.

Certain Medical Conditions May Never Be Fully Treatable Remotely

Many conditions can already be fully diagnosed and treated using telemedicine, and more and more will become fully treatable using telemedicine as the technology improves. But it seems highly possible that there will always be certain treatments, such as various forms of physical therapy and vaccinations, that require an in-person visit to a local doctor’s surgery.

Technology Will Never Be 100% Reliable

Planes still fall out of the sky, the internet still gets frustratingly slow at busy times of the day, iPads stop working for no apparent reason, high-tech machines of all types still malfunction. Sure, technology is improving all the time, but it is still far from perfectly reliable, and there is no reason to believe that perfect reliability will ever be achieved. This means there will always be a need for the local doctor’s surgery.

New Technologies Often Co-Exist Alongside More Antiquated Versions of Themselves

E-readers have not caused the demise of paper books, lots of people still prefer to listen to albums on vinyl, many patients still choose Freudian psychotherapy over Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and most businesses still choose flesh-and-blood accountants over robo-accountants to organize their books. So, even accepting the superior service that telemedicine provides in many areas, there will probably still be people who prefer the experience of visiting their local doctor’s surgery.

It’s certainly an interesting debate, and there are valid points for and against. What do you think? Let us know in the comments section.

Over 15 million people in the US have been diagnosed with social anxiety. It is a debilitating condition that can greatly impact a person’s social life, relationships, and career. For those with severe symptoms, it can be difficult to even leave the house. Social anxiety can also lead people to shy away from getting help because of the intensity of their symptoms. However, with improvements in telemedicine, online therapy is becoming the answer for many people who want relief from their symptoms. Here’s a look at how telemedicine can help those suffering from social anxiety to get effective, potentially life-changing treatment.

Telemedicine has come a long way in assisting people with mental health issues and disorders.

What is social anxiety?

There are many misconceptions out there that individuals with social anxiety are just “nervous” people. However, the condition goes much further than someone just being apprehensive about meeting new people or speaking in front of a large group (because who isn’t anxious about those things?). Rather, social anxiety is a chronic mental health condition where social interactions cause irrational anxiety. The emotional effects of this anxiety can differ in intensity, but usually the thoughts revolve around the person fearing that they’re going to be judged. There’s often a tendency to avoid certain activities or people in case of embarrassment or due to fear of failure. Many people have feelings of anxiety before and during events, or just when they’re out in public.

Social anxiety can manifest as intrusive, racing thoughts about being judged or the possibility of looking foolish in front of others. But just as upsetting as these thoughts can be, social anxiety sufferers can also experience intense physical symptoms including blushing, a fast heart rate, sweating, upset stomach and nausea, trouble breathing, dizziness, and muscle tension (among other things) that accompany these thoughts.

Although social anxiety disorder can develop at any age, it’s pretty common for individuals to start noticing these symptoms around adolescence – particularly because this is when teens are faced with big transitions (like entering high school and meeting new friends). There is a tendency for this condition to go undiagnosed because so many individuals consider their nervousness to just be part of their personality. However, the condition can become debilitating when people go out of their way to avoid any or all social situations. Some people can even develop agoraphobia, which prevents them from leaving their homes because of their overwhelming fear of being out in public.

Accessing mental health services from the safe space of your own home is a huge benefit of telemedicine.

What are the benefits of using online therapy?

There are many reasons online therapy or other telemedicine options can help with the treatment of social anxiety. One of the main benefits is that people with social anxiety are often apprehensive about leaving their homes. Online therapy (whether it’s with a licensed therapist or just an online support group) means that individuals can seek help without having to venture outside. For those who are embarassed by their symptoms or by needing to seek help, telemedicine provides them with the privacy of not having to go outside their home for treatment, so they won’t have to worry about running into people they know.

Another major benefit for using online therapy is the ability to save money. Many online therapists can charge less for their services because they don’t have to spend money on renting an office. There are also less costs for regular office fees. A reduction in therapy costs can be a significant motivator for people to get help when they otherwise wouldn’t.

One other factor is that some people with social anxiety have increased symptoms when they’re around crowds of people – this means that taking public transportation to a therapy appointment can often be a stressful, upsetting experience. So, with telemedicine options, individuals can seek help from their homes without having to worry about traveling to get treatment.

There are many online services people can use to seek treatment for their social anxiety.

Where can someone go for online help?

There is an increasing number of places online where social anxiety sufferers can go for help. One of the easiest ways is for the individual to first contact their health insurance company. They can help suggest any therapists in the network that offer online or video chat services. If the insurance company is unable to provide any good recommendations, there are other online platforms that specialize in online therapy. One great option is Learn To Live, which offers treatment options for social anxiety (as well as depression and insomnia) all on an online platform. Free assessments are provided to see if the treatment would be beneficial, and then a therapist is assigned to the patient. The treatment offered is CBT-based (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) that works to help the patient develop techniques and tools to better help them manage their symptoms. Web-based CBT has proven to be very effective in the treatment of social anxiety. Another treatment option is TalkSpace, which offers not only video chat therapy but also text messaging therapy (which can run as low as $49 a week – much less than traditional in-person sessions!).

If someone is looking for support with social anxiety but doesn’t think they need to work specifically with a therapist, there are also online support groups that can be very beneficial. These groups (including ones found on Facebook) can provide an understanding network of people who can relate and help provide suggestions regarding social anxiety symptoms. These online resources are often easier to fit into daily life than in-person groups.

Telemedicine and online therapy options can help provide a great deal of benefits for those suffering from social anxiety disorder. For help with the management and alleviation of symptoms, research these options for effective, convenient, and less costly treatment.

Telemedicine – the marriage of medicine with modern telecommunications technology – is growing in popularity all the time. The advent of the internet and the explosion in technological innovation that it heralded has changed the world in so many ways. Many areas of day-to-day life have been thoroughly transformed by communications tech. Medicine is certainly one of these areas, and in myriad ways, health care provision looks totally different today than it did a mere decade ago. These changes have really benefited patients and health care professionals by making it possible to receive and deliver extremely effective health care in more efficient ways than ever before. Here are 7 reasons telemedicine is becoming so popular.

Constantly Improving Technology

The first reason telemedicine is becoming more and more popular is because the service provided is improving all the time. Every year, technology makes huge advances and so telemedicine provision gets better, quicker, and more effective. With the advent of newer, better telemedicine apps and more cutting-edge forms of technology, telemedicine provision is going from strength to strength. People have more options now than ever before and what can be achieved using telemedicine is more impressive than ever. Due to this ever-improving service, telemedicine is continuously getting more popular.

More Choice

A big reason for telemedicine’s ever-increasing popularity with patients is the fact that it opens up a vast world of choice for them. No longer is a person limited to consulting with one of a small group of health care professionals that just happen to be located near to where they live. Using telemedicine apps, people can choose to be treated by medical professionals located in any area of the country, or the world, no matter how far away. This means that people now have a vast amount of choice in who they deal with, and this increased choice is proving very popular with patients.

More People Choosing to Live “Off the Grid”

With the advent of the internet and ever-improving telecommunications technology, an increasing number of people are choosing to escape the rat-race by moving out of big, crowded cities and working remotely from smaller towns and villages, rural areas, and even wildernesses, both at home and abroad, where they can enjoy a more relaxed and laid-back lifestyle. For this small (but ever-growing) army of digital nomads and remote workers, telemedicine is proving to be an invaluable way to receive the health care they need while living and working in a small, remote or foreign location that may not have many local health care options.

Time Savings

One of the main reasons for the increase in popularity of telemedicine is, of course, the fact that it is a huge time-saver. Consulting with a health care professional from the comfort of your own home or office using telemedicine takes far less time than traveling to a doctor’s surgery, clinic, or hospital for a traditional, face-to-face consultation. In today’s busy world, many people have very hectic schedules, so any way to save time is very valuable. With improving technology, telemedicine services are only getting quicker and quicker, so more and more people are choosing to avail of telemedicine as an excellent time-saving tool.

Money Savings

Telemedicine can be a lot cheaper than traditional medicine. With more choice comes increased competition. Due to the larger market that telemedicine opens up, competition is increased and this forces prices down. A small cabal of doctors in a small town can charge a higher price for their services, but if telemedicine is increasing competition by providing the consumer with access to medical professionals from anywhere in the country, then the price of all health care will tend to be forced down.

Avoid Doctors’ Surgeries

More and more people are happily utilizing the opportunity to avoid doctors’ surgeries. Telemedicine allows people to stay away from hospitals, clinics, and surgeries and the germs and viruses that these places often harbor. It is not uncommon to enter a hospital with one illness and pick up a new virus while being treated in the hospital. Avoiding this unpleasant possibility is very attractive to a lot of people. Telemedicine is providing people with the opportunity to stay comfortable and virus-free in their own home.

Convenient For Patients With Mobility Problems

For patients with disabilities or mobility problems, getting to a hospital or surgery can be a major inconvenience. Telemedicine is proving to be more and more popular with people in this situation, as it allows them to consult quickly and effectively with health care professionals without needing to go through the hassle of traveling to a destination that may or may not be disabled-user-friendly.

Telemedicine first became possible 20 years ago with the advent of modern internet-based communications technology. Since its inception, telemedicine has exploded in popularity and is now a vast industry that continues to grow at an ever-accelerating pace. For millions of people in the United States and around the world, being able to use telemedicine to receive medical care remotely via high-powered communications technology is a genuine godsend.

Growth in the telemedicine sector is happening exponentially, in tight lockstep with growth in technology that is fascinating, aiding, worrying, and even terrifying us in equal measures. As technology advances and becomes more spectacularly powerful, so the possibilities for developing and improving telemedicine become more and more thrilling. In a sense, we are only limited by our imaginations. So, what may the future hold for telemedicine and online consultations?

It is important to realize that this move away from face-to-face consultations and increasing dependence on modern technology, machines, and robots is certainly not something unique to the world of medicine and health care. The nature of how we communicate and work in the modern world is changing rapidly, profoundly, and permanently. While our lives become more and more convenient and our array of choices more and more boundless, many jobs are becoming obsolete. When is the last time you had your groceries scanned by a human at Walmart? Or used a traditional taxi cab company? Or waited in line at your local bank branch? Apps and machines are changing how we live in so many ways, and due to this, many people are having to rethink how they go about earning a living. Self-driving trucks are already in operation, and when they become widespread, as surely they must, many truck drivers around the world will lose their jobs. People who work in certain sectors of the health care industry will be affected by the unstoppable rise of telemedicine, but to what extent and in what ways, only time will tell.

Like in most industries, face-to-face consulting will become less necessary in health care as technology advances and grows. Telemedicine will enable more and more advanced consultations and procedures to be undertaken remotely. And while there are advantages to face-to-face consultations, overall, increasing people’s ability to consult remotely will bring huge benefits to the majority of patients. The more of a person’s health care needs that can be met using telemedicine, the more time and hassle they save, the more access people living remotely can have to the best health care, and the more choice all patients will have when deciding what type of care is best for them.

Telemedicine has many benefits for people all around the world.

As people’s attitudes towards technology change and they become increasingly comfortable with performing the majority of their advanced tasks of life online, increasing amounts of people will become willing to avail of telemedicine. The more tech-savvy the population becomes, the happier people will be to get their crucial health care needs met online. After all, it was only ten years ago that most people were very apprehensive about paying for goods online using their credit card details, and now practically everybody buys a large amount of their goods online through sites like Amazon and eBay. In the no-too-distant future, online medical consultations will be the norm. We may even soon have a generation of citizens who have never had the experience of queuing in a doctor’s waiting room!

Online consultations will continue to become quicker and more time-efficient. Time savings are a huge motivation for modern patients, and so telemedicine will continue to provide ways and means of speeding up medical consultations. Predictive algorithms will read the patient’s mind and provide answers to questions that they have not even realized they want to ask yet!

As more and more detailed info becomes transferable online, doctors will be able to do advanced consultations remotely. Patients will have apps on their smartphone that can detect their symptoms and determine their physical condition, and then relay this information instantly to their examining physician anywhere in the world.

As technology advances, so too does telemedicine.

As robots become smarter, patients will have less need to deal with flesh and blood human medical professionals at all. It is highly conceivable that most telemedicine consultations will be done with an embarrassingly intelligent (and presumably extremely personable!) robo-doctor within the next decade – this is already happening in the world of investing, where robo-advisors are giving people the best possible advice on what to do with their life savings.

These are just some of the developments the future holds for online medical consultations. Telemedicine and technology will continue to grow at an exponential rate, and while interesting predictions can be made, the future will surely be even more fantastic and exciting than anyone can currently imagine. Watch this space!

Many people in the US use medical marijuana to ease the symptoms of a physical or psychological condition. MMJ is widely used to treat psychological conditions such as depression, anxiety, and insomnia, as well as physical conditions such as chronic pain, glaucoma, and muscle spasms. Laws that legalize the use of medical cannabis are rolling out across the nation, state by state, at a rapid rate. Now, over half of the states in America allow some type of medical cannabis usage.

The rise of medical marijuana has coincided happily with the rise of telemedicine. In fact, you could say that telemedicine and medical marijuana are a match made in heaven. Here are six ways telemedicine can improve MMJ patients’ lives.

Telemedicine is a Godsend For MMJ Patients With Mobility Issues

Many medical marijuana users have mobility issues. Lots of people use MMJ to alleviate the discomfort associated with conditions that hamper mobility such as arthritis, chronic pain, muscle spasms, broken limbs, and being an amputee. For these people, getting to their local doctor’s office or MMJ dispensary can be a difficult ordeal packed with challenges, obstacles, and hassles. Telemedicine massively improves the lives of these MMJ patients by giving them the option to consult with their doctor, and even to order their MMJ, online or over the phone from their home.

Telemedicine Makes Life Much Easier For MMJ Patients Who Live in Remote Locations

Many legal MMJ states, such as California, Alaska, and Nevada, are large and have lots of wilderness. In states like these, a lot of medical cannabis patients live in very remote areas, far from their nearest doctor’s office or MMJ dispensary. Telemedicine makes life much easier for these people. They can consult with their physician online from their home instead of traveling for many hours to meet face-to-face. They can also contact their dispensary online to ask questions, check menus and merchandise, and even make orders.

Telemedicine De-Clutters MMJ Dispensaries

People can now contact their local medical marijuana dispensary using their smartphone or mobile device. This form of telemedicine means that patients do not need to take a trip to their local MMJ dispensary to pick up their prescription or get some advice. MMJ dispensaries are always keen to educate their patients about the newest developments in the MMJ world, and this can now be done using telemedicine. As well as receiving information via telemedicine, many dispensaries will take orders online and even make deliveries. This results in a much quicker and more streamlined service for MMJ patients, as well as dispensaries that are less hectic and cluttered.

Telemedicine Gives MMJ Patients Far More Choice

Telemedicine allows MMJ patients to consult with specialist doctors and dispensaries in any part of their state. Many localities, even in MMJ-friendly states such as California, Colorado, and Florida, have only a small selection of doctors and dispensaries. In smaller, more rural locales, the choice of what doctor a person can visit is very limited. Also, some locations do not yet have a local dispensary, or if they do, it often does not have the wide selection of MMJ treats that other dispensaries in larger towns and cities have. Telemedicine gives people a far wider choice of what doctor they consult with and which dispensary they can purchase their MMJ products from.

Telemedicine is a Giant Time Saver

Traveling to the doctor’s office, waiting in line, and then having a consultation in person can be a very time-consuming undertaking. Telemedicine really improves the lives of MMJ patients who have tight schedules and need to save as much time as possible. Instead of the multi-hour commitment of visiting a doctor in person, an MMJ patient can use telemedicine and have a consultation in a matter of minutes. Patients can also save time by consulting with their local dispensary using telemedicine.

Telemedicine Makes Waiting in a Doctor’s Waiting Room Unnecessary

Many MMJ users have medical conditions that are not contagious in any way. But when they visit a doctor’s office, they are subjected to airborne viruses and germs that can actually make them sicker than they were before they came. People with psychological conditions such as anxiety, depression, PTSD, or insomnia are often otherwise physically healthy. And people with pain conditions and chronic issues such as backache, glaucoma, muscle spasms, and arthritis are often healthy apart from their chronic condition. The last thing these people need is to pick up a cold or flu every time they need to consult with their doctor or pick up a repeat prescription. Telemedicine allows MMJ patients to consult with their doctor without having to queue up in a stuffy, virus-infested waiting room. This certainly makes the lives of MMJ patients much better.

Telemedicine has become hugely popular over the last few years. Being able to consult with a doctor from a remote location via the internet has saved a lot of people a great deal of time and effort. There are many ways telemedicine is superior to traditional medicine.

Traditional medicine has, of course, taken us one heck of a long way. It has developed, changed, and grown, and in so doing has improved our lives immeasurably. It’s not all that long ago that people were having limbs amputated without anesthetic, undergoing pointless and harmful frontal lobotomies, and dying of common colds! Today, miraculous synthetic limbs are making the lives of amputees much easier, brain surgeons are removing tumors from deep inside the fragile (and, until recently, impenetrable and barely understood) brain, and the mortality rates from diseases such as colds, flus, and stomach bugs are close to zero. Even cancer is now well understood and often treatable. Traditional medicine is a testament to the enormous potential of humankind. The visionaries who work tirelessly and dedicate their lives to growing and expanding this field are real heroes to whom we all owe a great deal.

But traditional medicine has some limitations. Most of these are to do with logistics and time. And this is where telemedicine comes in to improve things greatly. Here are five ways in which telemedicine is superior to traditional medicine.

Telemedicine is a Massive Time Saver

In today’s world, most people are busy, busy, busy! Time is of the essence for those who are juggling jobs, families, and numerous other commitments. For these overloaded people, every minute of time they can save is useful. Telemedicine in the USA saves busy people a lot of precious time. Traveling to a hospital or doctor’s office is often a stressful undertaking that eats up several hours of someone’s day. But consulting with a medical professional online, via an app, or over the phone using telemedicine can be done in barely any time at all. A vital telemedicine consultation can be over and done with in less than 15 minutes, from the comfort of your own home. 

The last thing you want when seeking medical care is to pick up an extra unwanted virus or bug! Luckily, you can avoid this by using telemedicine services.

Telemedicine Allows People to Avoid Germs and Viruses Lurking in Hospitals and Doctors’ Offices

The beauty of telemedicine is that you can use it from any place, at any time. And this means that in many situations, you’ll be able to have all your medical needs met remotely, and therefore not need to spend any time at all waiting in a doctor’s office or hospital, marinating in the germs and viruses that tend to call the air and surfaces there “home.” By using telemedicine, you can avoid the secondary illnesses that often result from spending time in a doctor’s office or hospital.

Telemedicine Gives Patients a Vast Amount of Choice

Using telemedicine, a patient can consult with a doctor or physician from almost anywhere in the entire United States (or even the world!). Many people live in localities that have an unimpressive selection of local doctors. Some people do not particularly like dealing with any of the medical professionals in their own neighborhood or town. Also, people often require the services of highly specialized physicians, but they live in a city where no such specialists operate. Telemedicine opens up a whole world of options and gives patients a vast amount of choice.

For those living in remote areas, telemedicine can be a real lifesaver.

Telemedicine is a Lifesaver For Folks Who Live in Remote Locations

Telemedicine is vastly superior to traditional medicine for people who live in remote areas of the country. Many rural folks live in places that are a multi-hour or even multi-day drive from their nearest suitable medical practice. For these people, going to the doctor’s office to receive traditional medical care is extremely inconvenient. People in remote locations are often busy farmers with tight schedules, so traveling for days to see a doctor is barely an option. Telemedicine allows these folks to consult with a physician anywhere in the world, right from their own isolated outpost… in a matter of seconds!

Telemedicine Makes Life Much Easier For Immobile Patients

For people with mobility issues, such as wheelchair users and folks who require disabled parking, getting to a doctor’s office or hospital can be a taxing ordeal. Even with handicap parking and ramps, it can require a herculean effort for folks with mobility issues to get around. Telemedicine is much better than traditional medicine at catering to these people. Using telemedicine, an immobile person can get a lot of their medical needs met in a hassle-free manner from the comfort of their own home.

In an increasingly stressful world, it can feel impossible to stay on top of your mental health. These problems can be made even worse if you can’t make the time to visit a doctor or a psychologist thanks to your busy schedule. Mental health is something that needs to be prioritized, but it can be so difficult to properly make time for it until it’s too late and you get burned out. Luckily, telemedicine exists to help people with busy schedules to properly take care of their mental health.

Telemedicine is experiencing a huge boom in popularity at the moment thanks to the proliferation of smartphones. Now that everyone has a machine in their pocket that allows them to order food, get a date, or buy clothes, medical professionals are using this technology to bring care to people who really need it. Telemedicine is the combination of telecommunications technology with medical or diagnostic advice. It has been in existence for almost as long as telecommunications, but in the past it was mostly used in emergency conditions where medics could not access patients, such as warzones and remote areas. However, in a world where everyone has a smartphone, telemedicine is being utilized for all kinds of everyday care.

Mental health maintenance is one of the ways that telemedicine is being used, and this is happening in many different ways. The first way is that people are accessing primary care physicians via their smartphones to conduct regular medical appointments in a way that is more convenient for them. For busy professionals, it can be hard to make time to visit your doctor’s office, especially if their location or opening hours are inconvenient. This is especially true if your job is particularly high-pressure and taking time off during working hours is unthinkable. Telemedicine means you can access medical advice for a mental condition or get a repeat prescription from the comfort of your own home.

Scheduling a telemedicine appointment is as easy as picking up your smartphone.

You might be unsure about how a medical appointment over the phone can work, but the truth is that it’s a very easy process. The first step is to log on and either make an appointment or visit a drop-in service, depending on the type of telemedical provider you’re visiting. In either instance, you may have to join a virtual waiting room, but after a short period of time, you’ll be connected with a doctor and you’ll be able to speak to them face-to-face via the camera on your phone. Like any doctor, they’ll ask about your condition and suggest treatment paths for you. For mental health issues, these may involve medication, therapy, lifestyle changes, or a combination of all three.

As well as being able to access primary care physicians, telemedicine can allow you to access therapy from psychologists or psychiatrists. You can ask your primary care physician for a telemedical referral or do your own research to find a provider that would work for you. Like using telemedicine for primary care, therapy via your smartphone is surprisingly easy. Using your phone for therapy means that you’re not confined to face-to-face therapy. Indeed, many telemedical therapy services allow patients to use text, phone, and email to speak to their therapists; this can be very useful for people with social anxiety who are nervous to speak with people and seek therapy. For people who have trouble leaving the house, telemedicine can offer them a safe space to access help and health care without forcing them out of their comfort zone. By using telemedicine in this way, you’ll be able to build up to fighting the symptoms of your mental illness in a way that is comfortable and safe for you.

If you need medication for your mental health condition, telemedicine can make procuring it a lot more convenient.

In seeking therapy or primary care for your mental health condition, you may have to get prescriptions for medication. Lengthy waits at pharmacies to fill prescriptions can be triggering for people suffering from some kinds of mental illness, especially if leaving the house is difficult. Telemedical providers can often link directly with pharmacies and send your prescriptions straight to them. This means that your medications will be ready and waiting for you when you arrive to the pharmacy, so you won’t have to wait and inconvenience yourself.

While mental illnesses can be some of the most difficult to live with on a daily basis, telemedicine is truly revolutionizing how mental health patients access their health care. It is a truly patient-centered approach, meaning that people who suffer at varying levels of severity will be able to access health care in a way that puts them at less stress, and thus helps them properly treat their conditions.

Experts estimate that a growing number of children are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) every year. A recent Center for Disease Control (CDC) study gave the number as 1 in 68 (or 14.6 per 1,000) school-age children with an ASD diagnosis. Although researchers’ opinions differ on whether this is due to an increase in cases or just better diagnosing tools, the fact remains that there are many children who need consistent treatment for their autism symptoms. Some autism specialists are turning to telemedicine options to help improve their treatment regimens, leading many to wonder if telemedicine could become the new frontier in treating autism.

ASD is a serious developmental disorder that affects an individual’s ability to communicate and interact appropriately with others. Some symptoms include an impact on the nervous system, obsessive interests, and repetitive behaviors. Because the disorder exists on a spectrum, the range and severity of symptoms can vary widely depending on the individual. Some treatments, like behavioral and educational therapies, are used to help reduce symptoms and encourage development and learning. Because specific therapies are recommended for treatment, families are faced with finding appropriate therapists or specialists to take their children to. This can be a daunting task if the family lives in a rural area or does not have access to these types of programs.

This is where telemedicine comes in. Telemedicine is the use of technology (particularly video chats with physicians or specialists) to help with the treatment of physical or mental illnesses. They can include video or email communications with a treatment team, online monitoring of symptoms, medication check-ins, and many more options. Telemedicine can be incredibly helpful for individuals who don’t have immediate access to the best and highest-quality health care. It can also help families save money, because these options cost less than traditional doctor’s office visits. These savings can be found because individuals don’t have to pay for transportation or for doctor’s office fees that are often accrued each time they visit a physician or specialist. Using telemedicine options also means that families don’t have to dedicate as much time to driving to appointments – they can be scheduled at more convenient times for the caregivers. This, in turn, can create less stress on the family, because the treatment is more tailor-made to the family and the child’s needs.

With advances in telemedicine, treatments and programs for children with autism are improving.

Specialists who treat children with autism are relying more and more on telemedicine to help better reach and treat their patients. Vanderbilt Kennedy Center’s Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders (TRIAD) in Nashville, Tennessee is currently using telemedicine in their treatment regimens. They mail an iPad on a tripod that can be controlled remotely to families they’re treating. The specialists then conduct hour-long behavioral therapy appointments remotely from their office using the iPads as cameras.

The telemedicine program is being funded by a $3.25 million grant from the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE). The motivation was that TRIAD could expand rapid remote diagnostic evaluations, so that families in rural or ‘low-resource’ areas would have more access to services. Researchers have found that this form of telemedicine has been effective, partly because younger patients are able to be treated right in their own homes, where they feel the most comfortable. Additionally, they’ve found that costs have been cut because of reductions in travel expenses as well.

Another study funded by the National Institutes of Health is being conducted by researchers at Purdue University to determine if telemedicine can be used to diagnose autism in infants. The five-year study will give selected parents of high-risk babies (with fragile X or neurogenic syndromes) a telehealth kit, which includes a tablet, heart monitor, LENA vocal recorder and vest, tools to collect saliva, and toys. The families taking part in the project will be educated on how to use all of the items. They’ll also be instructed on how to use eye movement exercises and heart activity monitoring to help track their child’s attention and play behaviors, as well as social communication and motor skills.

Telemedicine can also help as a diagnostic tool.

The project’s lead researcher, Bridgette Tonnsen, said, “We are partnering with the parents to coach them on how to do the research in their homes where the children will be more comfortable rather than traveling long distance to a lab. This will be more efficient, cost-effective, more family-friendly, and, I think, as a result we will be able to collect more powerful data.”

So, not only could telemedicine help once a child is diagnosed with autism (or on the spectrum), research like this could actually help to diagnose infants as well. This is crucial, since early intervention can be imperative in starting the child early on treatments and therapies that will be most effective for the alleviation of their symptoms. Whether telemedicine is being used to diagnose or to treat, it’s helping to change autism treatment for the better.