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.

During this year, many strides have been taken to implement more telemedicine services throughout the U.S. Patients have been more able to rely on remote options and video chats with physicians to help augment their treatment. They’ve also been receiving care for a wide variety of conditions and illnesses (with help from diagnosing the flu to developing a fast treatment plan during a stroke event). There are so many advantages to including telehealth options in a patient’s care, so here’s a look at some of the most beneficial aspects of using telemedicine in 2018.

More convenient care

One study notes that nearly 74% of Americans would be willing to use telemedicine services versus seeing their doctor in person. A huge benefit of telehealth is that patients have an easier time getting access to medical professionals. Using online tools like video chats, patients can connect with their physicians when it’s most convenient for them (instead of always having to work around the doctor’s schedule). Doctors are then able to have productive consultations with their patient without all the distractions an office can provide. These communications are more convenient because patients don’t have to wait until their next scheduled appointment if they have questions or concerns. Such convenience also permits patients to report any early warning signs about symptoms they might be worried about. This makes telemedicine a great option for encouraging individuals to maintain regular check-ins with their doctors, as well as supporting the careful monitoring of a patient’s condition or overall health.

Access to care for rural patients

Before the advent of telemedicine, patients who lived in remote or rural areas were often unable to get the proper care they needed. Many doctors or hospitals were just located too far from their residences. However, now telemedicine has created a way for patients to connect with doctors and specialists easily – as long as they have the Internet, they can access medical treatment. More access equals a greater chance of properly diagnosing and treating many serious conditions and creating more treatment parity for rural patients.

Ease of access is one of the primary benefits of telemedicine in 2018.

More access to specialists

It used to be that many people were limited in their treatment options because of where they lived. Nowadays, telemedicine is able to connect patients with the appropriate physicians they need, no matter their location. This means there will be improvements in the care of people who didn’t have direct access to the proper specialists before. Patients with specific needs or with rare conditions now have the ability to communicate and work with medical professionals throughout the country. They’ll be receiving the best care possible, even if they don’t live near the specialist.

Quicker treatment options

Another huge benefit of telemedicine is that patients can access quicker care because of this technology. Many telehealth measures mean that physicians can diagnose and treat a patient in minutes (versus a long waiting time at the ER or to get in to see a doctor). This fast treatment can literally be lifesaving for critical conditions like strokes or heart attacks. Telemedicine also eliminates some of the red tape surrounding health care – treatment teams can more easily communicate and collaborate with each other in the patient’s best interests. Medical records and test results can also be sent quickly online and through databases, so there’s less waiting time during that stage of the patient’s care.

More streamlined care in doctor’s offices and ERs

If more people use telemedicine, the care patients receive during in-person visits will also improve. In fact, statistics from the American Medical Association and Wellness Council of America state that more than 75% of doctor, urgent care, and emergency room visits could actually be handled effectively through a phone or video chat. If patients with non-critical injuries or illnesses can be taken care of with video chats, that leaves the in-person visits for more serious or life-threatening cases. This change means that not only would patients receive more streamlined and quicker treatment when they actually go in person to a doctor’s office or an ER, but also that wait times for these places would be shortened. This results in patients getting faster, more efficient, and more effective treatment when they need it.

In 2018, if you have a smartphone and an internet connection, all the benefits of telemedicine are available to you.

Lower costs for patients

A great advantage of telemedicine is that patients can save money by turning to telehealth options instead of in-person visits. These options can be cheaper because doctors don’t have to charge for office fees or other add-on costs. Patients can also save money on transportation costs they’d have to shell out if they needed to get to an office. Likewise, physicians, hospitals, and insurance companies have all seen decreases in their costs because of more patients using telemedicine to receive treatment.

With more patients using telemedicine, a new trend has emerged of patients being more involved in their care and more engaged with their own health care. This can lead to patients being more likely to opt out of harmful behaviors (like unhealthy eating or smoking), which can result in an overall improved healthiness. People who are leading healthier lifestyles will also end up lowering health care costs both for themselves and for the population at large. There are many beneficial aspects of telemedicine that are only continuing to make major improvements in the health care field.

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!

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.

Telemedicine is a brand-new initiative redefining the way patients in the U.S. approach health care. It was actually introduced in the 1960s as a way of connecting remotely located patients with medical professionals via phones, and despite not really resembling its former self any longer, the name seems to have stuck. In its modern incarnation, telemedicine is based entirely around digital technology, a field that has witnessed unprecedented development in recent decades. It is now possible to communicate with anyone in the world in a matter of minutes; on top of that, we can now stream our favorite films, television shows, and music instantaneously. Telemedicine provides this same on-demand approach to health care, allowing patients to connect with doctors at their own leisure, and facilitating clinical visits in the comfort of the patient’s own home.

Telemedicine is a brand-new initiative redefining the way patients in the U.S. approach health care.

There are numerous benefits to telemedicine for both patients and doctors alike. In the first instance, it saves both parties time. Patients no longer have to plan whole days around trips to their doctor’s office; for many people, it takes a lot of effort to visit the doctor, and this problem is only compounded if you happen to live far away from a medical professional. On the flip side, not having to schedule patients for extended visits mean that doctors can see more of them during their working day, as well as saving on costs of admin work. They can also enlist the help of the patient for diagnostic experiments, via the use of particular apps or regular check-ins. This enables doctors to get a broader view of the patient’s symptoms, and also provides peace of mind for the patient; we all know that symptoms never seem to manifest during those 20 minutes we’re inside the doctor’s office!

But that’s not to say that the rise of telemedicine eclipses the need for face-to-face visits with a doctor. Telemedicine is a fantastic tool to be used in conjunction with consultations, particularly at the start of treatment, where patients are mostly concerned with explaining their symptoms to their new doctor. But it is not a replacement for traditional medicine as such. Thus, the question becomes: when exactly should you choose telemedicine over regular doctor visits? This is a crucial question for patients and potential patients to ask themselves, and knowing the correct answer can make all the difference for your medical treatment.

The main advantage of telemedicine, and the one that will likely be the deciding factor of how it’s utilized by individual patients, is its on-demand nature. In this way, it follows in the footsteps of platforms like Netflix and Spotify, which provide the same service for films and music respectively. If you have a pressing or concerning medical problem, telemedicine can help you get a diagnosis quickly; for example, if you have symptoms that come on suddenly and are worrying you, you can easily look to telemedicine in order to receive a fast diagnosis. Obviously, this is not a replacement for the emergency room, and if the symptoms are particularly debilitating, that’s the first place you should head. But telemedicine can be remarkably effective for those symptoms that fall in between – ones that you don’t want to leave any later, but aren’t serious enough to take to the hospital.

If you have a pressing or concerning (but not life-threatening) medical problem, telemedicine can help you get a diagnosis quickly.

Telemedicine can also be useful for a second opinion, or if you don’t have complete faith in your local doctor or physicist. It helps patients branch out and connect with doctors all over the country, or even the world. This means that patients aren’t tied to their local health care provider, and have a number of options available when selecting a specialist from a family doctor referral. This can provide great peace of mind for many patients, regardless of their condition. When it comes to themselves and their families, every person wants the very best health care they can get their hands on.

Another time to use telemedicine over regular doctor visits is when you’re ordering or reordering a prescription of some kind. We all know what a hassle it is to return to the doctor’s office every time a a prescription needs refilling – but with telemedicine, you can avail of some home delivery prescriptions ordered from the comfort of your living room. Providing you suffer from a qualifying condition, sites like MMJ Recs will dispatch a medical marijuana identification card to you, meaning you can utilize the medicine. Emotional support animals are another form of progressive health care sweeping the nation, relieving patients from symptoms of common mental health disorders. To avail of an emotional support animal, you require what’s known as an ESA letter, which you can also procure via telemedicine, on a site like Moosh.

All in all, telemedicine can be a great asset in the field of health care, and the more patients get familiar with it, the more they’ll trust and use it. Hundreds of telemedicine-based apps are available on a range of devices, so if you’re interested in seeing how telemedicine can benefit you, download some and start trying them out today!

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!

Medical advancements are happening all the time. At this very moment, teams of scientists and researchers all over the world are hard at work, attempting to find treatments and cures for a number of malicious diseases. While nobody knows how far off we are from curing cancer, the most devastating, prevalent disease of them all, we are certainly close to finding remedies for long-time afflictions like Alzheimer’s, or at least slowing them down considerably. Like many other industries in 2018, the medical field is constantly in flux, developing all the time. One of the most exciting developments to emerge in recent years is telemedicine, a movement that digitizes health care, making it more accessible for both patients and doctors. But as telemedicine usage increases, will it ever overtake tried-and-tested, traditional health care?

When we talk about telemedicine, the first thing to remember is that it isn’t actually some new-fangled initiative. It actually dates back decades, to the 60s – and if you think about it that way, the name ‘telemedicine’ does sound like something older rather then modern. It was initially a way for doctors to communicate with remote patients via telecommunications, without the need to see them at home; the practice was considered an outlier service for many years, only being used sporadically. However, with the recent advent of digital technology, telecommunications came back with a bang. Not only was remote communication now all the rage, it could actually be instilled in a meaningful way for patients and doctors alike.

Telemedicine is a perfect addition to the current array of digital advancements, and has already seen significant application in the field.

The name telemedicine is still used, but in practice it’s actually more like health care on-demand. In fact, the new form of telemedicine bears very little resemblance to the old. It also utilizes a number of digital technologies, not just telecommunications, to bring health care to a wide array of patients all over the world. Many industries have been bolstered by an on-demand type of service; Netflix and other on-demand platforms have dominated traditional TV, almost to the point of extinction, and people are much happier because of it. CDs are a rarity these days, as Spotify and music streaming platforms have assumed control of that particular industry. It’s clear we are moving towards a more fluid, connected society, where the traditional barriers between consumer and service are coming down. Telemedicine is a perfect addition to this array of digital advancements, and has already seen significant application in the field.

Telemedicine is aiding patients in a number of varied ways. Some examples of this can be found in the prescription of medical marijuana, which can now be obtained (in MMJ-legal states) over the internet from outlets like MMJ Recs. The situation is similar when it comes to emotional support animals; this progressive new therapy for mental health patients involves easing the symptoms of depression, anxiety, PTSD, and bipolar disorder with the presence of an animal, who serves as a companion and consistent source of comfort for the patients. To register as an ESA owner, you need a verified document from a medical professional, known as an ESA letter. This can also be procured via telemedicine, from a site like Moosh, making it easier for patients to avail of this service from the comfort of their home.

Emotional support animals are a progressive new therapy for mental health patients.

The benefits of telemedicine are many and obvious. But the real question here is: will telemedicine ever overtake traditional, face-to-face health care? In short, the answer is no. Traditional health care is invaluable to patients and doctors, and nothing will likely ever replace face-to-face consultations; they are the best way for a doctor to appraise their patient’s state and the disorder they’re affected by, and it will remain that way for the foreseeable future. It is impossible to provide telemedicinal healthcare for every type of ailment; the more serious ones invariably (and sometimes inevitably) involve surgery and other physical interventions that telemedicine, in its current state, just can’t match.

It is best, then, to see telemedicine as an extremely valuable health care tool, rather than a usurper to the traditional health care system. It is designed to work hand-in-hand with physical consultations, not to replace them fully, and while it holds many advantages over them, it is still only a method to optimize patient care, not overhaul it completely. Telemedicine is a lifesaver for patients living remotely; via only an internet connection and a device, it allows them to contact a health care professional and have any worrying symptoms checked out immediately. It also grants patients better access to specialists; previously, if you lived in a rural area, there would usually be only one or two specialists in close proximity at your disposal. With the advent of telemedicine, a whole spectrum of specialists become available to patients, no matter where they are in the world.

Although we’re all still learning the ropes when it comes to digital technology, it’s apparent that it’s here to stay. Telemedicine provides a way of integrating this developing field with traditional health care. By taking the best of both worlds to create a new health care structure, the future looks bright for patients.