You may be unfamiliar with the concept of telemedicine, but it is changing the lives of patients the world over. With the advent of new and emerging technology, we are all carrying our lives in our pockets via our smartphones. They cover everything from banking, to contacts, to diaries. They are everything in a small device – and they now cover health care too. While you would traditionally visit a doctor in a clinic or a hospital, it is now easier than ever to access health care via the internet from the comfort of your own home through the medium of telemedicine.

What is telemedicine? Simply put, it is the delivery of medical advice and diagnoses to a patient via the means of telecommunications. It may seem a bit unorthodox, but the truth is that telemedicine is revolutionizing health care for all kinds of patients. Women can access a prescription to a contraceptive pill without leaving the house. Parents can get advice on how to treat their sick kids, knowing that they’re doing the right thing, and medical marijuana patients can easily access advice and treatment without fear of judgment.

It can be difficult for people who need medical marijuana to be able to access treatment. While 29 states in the USA have legalized the use of medical marijuana, each state has its own rules for eligibility and there is still considerable stigma surrounding the use of medical marijuana to legitimately treat various conditions, including multiple sclerosis, HIV/AIDS, cancer, and depression. It can be very difficult and intimidating for a patient to go into a doctor’s office and seek treatment with medical marijuana. Telemedicine can be a much easier and safer route for patients to get the treatment that they need.

MMJ patients have benefited in so many ways from the advent of telemedicine.

So how do you use telemedicine to access medical marijuana treatment? The good news is that it’s a really easy process. There are many medical professionals operating online who can offer you confidential medical advice and give you your medical marijuana card so that you can access the correct treatment. You simply log on to a registered and professional website like MMJ Recs, wait for a doctor to become available, and speak to them about your condition. If they think that you’re suitable for treatment, they will write a recommendation for you to get medical marijuana. The letter will be mailed to you, officially signed and stamped, and then you’ll be able to get the medication that you need.

Many patients who require access to medical marijuana have difficulty leaving the house due to a number of reasons. This could be agoraphobia and anxiety related to depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, or physical reasons relating to the severity of a condition such as Parkinson’s disease or ataxia. Patients like this may not always have access to a doctor who can provide home visits. In addition, home doctor’s visits are often more expensive than traditional clinic visits, so it can be problematic for people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Telemedicine doctor’s appointments are usually even cheaper than going to visit a doctor in person, so are very suitable for people who may not have a lot of money but who need to visit a doctor frequently.

Now that telemedicine has come into play, it’s a much less stressful experience to consult with a doctor and obtain a medical marijuana card.

Depending on your state laws, there may be restrictions on the kind of medical marijuana that you can take. The best thing about telemedicine is that you’re not being rushed out of an office by a hassled doctor with a waiting room full of patients. You may have to pay a bit more for extra time, but a doctor who is working via telemedicine will not feel as pressured to rush you out and will be able to dedicate a little more time to answering any questions that you might have. They can guide you in relation to dispensaries if you are not familiar with the best way to purchase medical marijuana, and they can also tell you what strain of medical marijuana and which form to take it in is the best for you.

As marijuana is still illegal at a federal level, you will not get a medical marijuana prescription, but rather a recommendation. This is what you can bring to a dispensary in order to get your medical marijuana. Telemedicine is making medical marijuana patients’ lives far easier and has empowered them to be able to seek their own treatment that is the most appropriate for their illness. Telemedicine is easy and convenient, both for patients and medical professionals. There’s nothing better than knowing you’re carrying the best medical advice possible in your pocket and that you’re able to seek help whenever you need it.

Over the last decade or so, both telemedicine and medical cannabis have exploded in popularity and viability. To the average layperson, “telemedicine” and “medical marijuana” were relatively unknown terms until well into the noughties, but both are now buzzwords, firmly established in the lexicon and synonymous with forward-thinking, cutting-edge health care.

Telemedicine is the catch-all term for any patient/health care professional consultations done remotely using modern communications technology. Telemedicine has been made not only possible, but easy, by the advent of super-fast broadband and powerful smartphone and mobile device technology. Thanks to telemedicine, it is now possible to consult with a health care professional anywhere in the world in seconds from the comfort of your own home.

Medical cannabis has become the treatment du jour for many medical conditions. Its meteoric rise over the last decade has roughly (and coincidentally?) paralleled the rise of telemedicine over the last few years. Medical marijuana is now legal in almost half of US states. It is used to treat a wide range of conditions and symptoms, from chronic pain to insomnia to anxiety.

Telemedicine has made access to MMJ so much easier for so many patients.

The rise of telemedicine has obvious and massive advantages for medical cannabis patients. And the rise of medical marijuana has surely helped to facilitate and fuel the rise of telemedicine. In telemedicine and MMJ, we can witness two glorious (and initially separate) revolutions melding together and merging into one, big, beautiful “new world order.” Hallelujah!

Here are six ways that telemedicine has made medical marijuana patients’ lives a lot easier.

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

Many people end up ill (or double-ill) as a result of the time they have to spend waiting in a germ-filled doctor’s waiting room. For many cannabis card-holding patients whose medical conditions may be chronic or psychological (and who may otherwise be totally healthy), catching a flu or stomach bug is hugely inconvenient, but thanks to telemedicine, it’s now also totally unnecessary. Doing your MMJ consultations via telemedicine means you can stay out of the doctor’s waiting room and away from the contagious germs of other people.

Telemedicine Allows Much Greater Choice of Which Doctor to Consult With

Not all physicians have cottoned on to the benefits of medical marijuana card usage. Some conservative “dinosaur doctors” still believe cannabis is for stoners and would rather prescribe liver-dissolving, depression-inducing, libido-sapping synthetic drugs to their patients instead of natural, healthy medical herb. If your local doctors are mostly of this ilk, telemedicine allows you to bypass them and connect with more forward-thinking physicians in cyberspace.

Telemedicine Provides Ease of Access For Patients Who Struggle With Mobility

For medical cannabis card holders who have conditions that involve chronic pain, stiffness, or a lack of mobility, or for patients who require the use of very strong, indica-dominant MMJ strains that result in “couch-lock,” getting to the doctor’s office can be very difficult. So for people in this situation, being able to consult with a doctor using telemedicine from the comfort of their own home is a godsend.

If you’re a medical marijuana patient, you’ll experience a whole range of benefits due to the rise of telemedicine.

Telemedicine Means Massive Time Savings

Many medical marijuana card holders lead hectic and busy lives, juggling young families with high-octane careers that require a ton of time, energy, and dedication. For these folks, time is an extremely rare and valuable resource. Wherever they can save time they will, and telemedicine allows them to do this in a big way by avoiding the hour-munching chore of driving to the doctor’s office, twiddling their thumbs in the waiting room queue, and then making small talk with their dithering old family doctor – and all of this before finally getting down to business! A telemedicine consultation is much faster than a conventional, in-person consultation, and so it can save a patient with a hectic schedule valuable time.

Telemedicine is Best For Emergency Prescriptions

There is nothing worse than running out of MMJ at an inopportune time (over the holidays, for example). If you need an MMJ prescription in a hurry, or at a time when the local doctor’s office is closed, then the best way to do this is to use telemedicine. Using telemedicine, you can consult with a physician at any time of the day or night and get that valuable prescription you need. Unfortunately this does not guarantee that the local dispensary will be open, but at least you’re halfway there!

Telemedicine is Ideal For Patients Who Live in a Remote Location

For cannabis card patients who live in the wilderness, far from any doctor’s office, telemedicine makes life a heck of a lot easier. Consulting with a physician via smartphone from the comfort of your own Appalachian log cabin is so much easier than jumping into your jeep (or two-seater seaplane) and making the long trek to the nearest urban settlement to consult with a doc face to face!

You may not have heard of the term “telemedicine” before, but there’s a chance you might already be actively involved in it. Essentially, telemedicine describes the use of telecommunication and digital technology to provide clinical health care from a distance, i.e. not a regular face-to-face clinical visit that people are traditionally used to when they go and see a doctor. It started as a fringe service in the late 1960s and was first introduced in Massachusetts General Hospital by Kenneth Bird, originally to solve the patient backlog of employees and travelers at Logan International Airport, which was located three congested miles away from MGH. This primitive version of telemedicine incorporated a two-way audio-visual microwave circuit and treated over 1,000 patients.

These days, telemedicine is an entirely different ballgame. The advent of digital technology has spurred the movement on over the last ten years, and as it stands in 2018, we are on the cusp of telemedicine becoming a major factor in the vast and crowded arena of health care. From audio-visual microwaves, the format of communication switched to telephones, the first system of which was operational in 1989, and then finally digital communications, which include smartphones, tablets, laptops, and any other device that utilizes digital technology.

Digital communications technology has advanced medicine in more ways than many can imagine.

For most people, the word “telemedicine” might sound intimidating or foreign; the question soon becomes “How does it affect me?” In truth, the question you should be asking yourself is “How does it benefit me?”, as telemedicine comes complete with a whole range of advantages for patients and doctors alike. The main benefit is unchanged from the initial need to introduce the concept into the health care system: remote treatments. This doesn’t mean a literal treatment by remote control (though we might get there someday) – it means giving medical professionals the means to treat patients who are far away from them. These include patients who live in rural areas, where a trip to the doctor’s office is a mammoth operation, or those who are physically or mentally incapacitated, and because of the status of their condition, can’t leave the house.

This is of great benefit to both doctors and the patients that they treat. Patients can get seen to without wasting their entire day, while doctors can consult with more patients during the day than they normally would if they were seeing them in person. Another benefit of telemedicine is a wider access to specialists; previously, people who lived in remote areas were referred to whichever specialist happened to be close to them, whether they had a good reputation or not. Telemedicine gives patents the freedom to select a specialist who suits them best, whether they live in the countryside or the city. It puts more power in the hands of the patients, who often communally complain of being disenfranchised with the U.S. health care system.

Another advantage of telemedicine is the ability to avail of certain medications or services online. If you’re handicapped and can’t physically leave the house without specific provisions, then you can avail of benefits like a handicap parking permit from Dr. Handicap from the comfort of your own home. This removes the catch-22 situation of having to drive somewhere to pick up the permit in the first place. Another increasing trend in the health care system is the use of medical marijuana to treat all manner of diseases and conditions. If you live in one of the 29 states that has legalized medical marijuana, then through a site like MMJ Recs, you can easily be prescribed a medical marijuana identification card, which will legally allow you to avail of the medicine at local dispensaries.

There are so many benefits to telemedicine, both for patients and medical professionals.

Telemedicine also allows doctors to keep track of patients remotely and have the results of certain tests uploaded to them digitally. This removes the need for patients to stay in hospitals overnight for certain exams, freeing up hospital space for more intensive patients, and also allows doctors to get far more accurate results than they might if they were simply consulting with the patient for fifteen minutes. But despite all these advantages, the single biggest benefit of telemedicine for those in the modern age is the fact that it is immediate. Every single service or industry in our world is moving towards an on-demand system; we’ve seen Netflix practically extinguish traditional television format, and WhatsApp and other social messengers lay waste to old school telephone calls.

Telemedicine is aiming to do the same thing with traditional health care methods. Doing so will take more time and a more revolutionized approach than other industries, as the intricacies of health care are more nuanced. But the end result will be a better service and treatment for everyone involved, on both sides of the line. Taxpayers’ and patients’ money will be saved and better spent, while the quality of treatment will continue to increase as telemedicine becomes more prevalent. All in all, telemedicine will affect you, the potential patient, positively across the whole health care spectrum; it’s time to embrace the future!

These days, more and more people are choosing to use telemedicine instead of visiting their doctor’s office in person. Telemedicine has exploded in popularity in recent years, especially since the use of smartphones became widespread. Now that almost everybody has an ultra-smart, internet-connected mobile device close to hand, consulting with a medical professional effectively, in high-fidelity, and with complete privacy from any distance has become remarkably easy.

For those of you who are new to the conversation, “telemedicine” is the name for any medical health care provided at a distance using information technology such as a smartphone, tablet, or laptop. Modern communications technology has made it possible for patients to communicate with their doctors over long distances, and now that even the most basic smart-devices can transmit images, health informatics data, and live video links across any distance, telemedicine is becoming a viable option for patients with more and more complex medical conditions.

As the rapidly growing number of patients who are now using mobile technology to get their health care needs met quickly and efficiently will attest, there are numerous advantages to joining the telemedicine revolution. Here are seven reasons why using telemedicine is better than sitting in a doctor’s office.

Is there anything worse than spending hours in a doctor’s waiting room?!

Telemedicine Affords You More Choice

If you are visiting a health care professional in person, you are necessarily limited in who you can choose based on the area you live in and what doctors operate in your locality. This is not a problem if you have a local doctor who you enjoy visiting. But if none of the health care professionals in your locality particularly float your boat, then you may be forced into the awkward situation of having to spend time with a doctor you do not particularly feel comfortable with. One of the great things about telemedicine is that it opens up a whole world of options to you. Using telemedicine, you can literally consult with a medical professional on the other side of the world if that’s what you want. Telemedicine affords you a ton more choice than regular, face-to-face medical treatment.

Telemedicine is Excellent if You Struggle With Mobility

For patients with chronic diseases and medical conditions that curtail mobility and require the use of a disabled parking permit, telemedicine is a huge help. Even with a parking permit, getting from A to B can be very difficult for people with chronic mobility issues, and so being able to communicate with a medical professional from their own home using telemedicine makes life a great deal easier for these people.

Using Telemedicine Saves a Lot of Time

Getting to a doctor’s surgery can take time. Driving time, finding a parking space (especially a handicap parking space), waiting in line… It all adds up! In the modern world most people live busy lives in which free time is at a premium, so any time-saving device is most welcome. Book an appointment online, and then simply make the phone call or log online at the allotted time. Telemedicine is quick, easy, and massively time saving.

Telemedicine is Ideal if You Need Medical Advice in a Hurry

At many doctor’s surgeries there tends to be a waiting list of several hours at the least, but often several days. This is no good if you need medical advice pronto. This issue does not arise with telemedicine. Because telemedicine is so much more time-efficient, waiting times tend to be very short. Using telemedicine, you can always communicate with a medical professional very quickly. If you need medical advice in a hurry, telemedicine tends to be a much better option than an old-fashioned face-to-face medical consultation.

Telemedicine is particularly useful for people who have to travel a long way to a physical doctor’s office.

Telemedicine is a Lifesaver if You Live in a Remote Location

One of the most obvious ways in which telemedicine is better than visiting a doctor’s office is that for some people who live in very remote locations, the nearest doctor’s office is a prohibitively far distance away! If you live in the middle of nowhere, getting to a doctor’s office can be a major chore, perhaps taking many hours, or even days. For people who live in a remote location, telemedicine is often a much better option than visiting a doctor’s office in person.

Telemedicine Allows You to Avoid the Plethora of Nasty Viruses and Germs That Live in Doctor’s Waiting Rooms

Doctor’s waiting rooms are often hotbeds of novel and exciting (to doctors, at least!) viruses and germs. And while the biologist in you might find these rapidly evolving species rather fascinating, they are usually best studied from afar, and in the abstract. A few hours in a doctor’s surgery can leave you sicker than when you entered. This is not a concern when you use telemedicine.

Telemedicine Makes Communicating With a Doctor Easier For People Who Require Medical Marijuana

Many patients who suffer with conditions that involve chronic pain require treatment with medical cannabis. If the patient is using a strong indica strain, then they may be quite lethargic and dozy. This can make getting to a doctor’s surgery somewhat difficult, and so for patients in this situation, telemedicine can be a very helpful alternative option.

Twenty years after California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana, a further vote was passed that permits the recreational use of marijuana in the state for any adult over the age of 21. Proposition 64 comes into effect from January 2018.

People currently in possession of a cannabis card are genuinely concerned that their own particular needs might now be overlooked and that the recreational use of marijuana will give it a bad name, thereby making it more difficult for patients to access and consume. They wonder how their rights will be affected and if, indeed, they will still need a California medical marijuana card. There is still a lot of uncertainty as to how this new law will play out – especially as each locality has the right to set its own rules.

We firmly believe that medical marijuana is here to stay and that it’s vital that you hang on to your cannabis card and renew it annually as required. With your card, you will always have access to the marijuana that helps your own particular condition, and access also to help and advice. Recreational use of the drug is something entirely different.

Even with recreational marijuana legalized in California, medical marijuana is here to stay.

Another reason why we believe it’s essential for you to hold onto your card, or to apply for a medical marijuana card online if you don’t already have one, is that recreational use will not be allowed in public. Card-carrying medical marijuana patients, however, are currently permitted and will continue to be permitted to smoke medical marijuana in most places where tobacco smoking is allowed. Furthermore, recreational users will be limited to growing just six marijuana plants at a time on their property, whereas cannabis card holders will still be able to cultivate up to 100 square feet of the plant.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, if you’re a card holder, you will always have access to medical experts to discuss the best dosage and strain for you and to contact for advice.

This is where telemedicine really comes into its own for medical marijuana patients. You may not realize that you’re actually using telemedicine in your lives at the moment! A short chat with your doctor or specialist on the phone, or your X-rays or scans being transmitted from the hospital to your doctor, are just two examples of how telemedicine is being used today.

If you are already in possession of a medical marijuana card, then one way that advances in telemedicine could work for you is that you could arrange a Skype call with your doctor rather than seeing him or her in person. You might not feel like leaving the house, or maybe the thought of sitting in a waiting room with a lot of people freaks you out – so to be able to speak to your doctor privately, but still face-to-face, without leaving your home has got to be attractive. If your doctor is flexible, he/she can schedule this call at a time to suit you.

Another obvious way you could use telemedicine is simply by phoning in your medical marijuana order to your local registered dispensary and arranging to pick it up at your convenience. It will be ready for you, so there’ll be no hanging around or waiting in line.

Telemedicine can help you procure a medical marijuana card stress-free.

If you don’t already possess a cannabis card and feel that you would qualify for one, then the best way to acquire one is to apply for a medical marijuana card online, via MMJ Recs. Application is made easy, thanks to telemedicine! You simply have to complete a standard medical form online and upload your relevant medical documents. You will then be contacted by a medical marijuana specialist, who will carry out an evaluation – either over the phone or via Skype. The physician will ask you questions about your condition and medical history and will also want to know why you think taking medical marijuana will help you. You will be advised as to the best strain and the appropriate amount for your condition and all benefits and associated risks will be made clear to you. You will also have the opportunity to ask any questions you wish. This private, one-to-one consultation is very reassuring and non-threatening. Once approved, your medical marijuana card will be sent to you in the mail. No doubt, in the not-too-distant future, such will be the advances in telemedicine that a card will be dispatched to you electronically!

It’s clear to the relevant experts that medical marijuana is definitely here to stay, despite the new legislation. It is to your advantage to have and to hold onto your cannabis card. Telemedicine plays a vital role in the application mechanism, streamlining the process and making it easier for you to deal with if you can’t face leaving the house or being in a public area with other people. Once you have your card, you can still access the various professionals via phone or Skype for advice or to place an order.

The rapid and on-going advances in telemedicine are only going to help medical marijuana card holders further, as they enable more and more things to be done remotely rather than in a person-to-person situation. Watch this space!

Although it sounds like a relatively new phenomenon, telemedicine has been around in some form or another since the invention of the telephone. The focal idea behind the movement, since its inception, has been to provide patients living in rural areas, or patients that are physically incapacitated, with access to top-level healthcare via the medium of telecommunications. While it was implemented successfully in decades previous, telemedicine was regarded as a fringe service, with the main bulk of patients opting to visit their doctor in person. However, the relentless progression of digital technology has made the service more relevant than ever, with telemedicine poised to become a major force in the future of the healthcare industry.

The smartphone is the main herald of this technological advancement, and has cemented itself as a necessity for modern day living. We do most of everything on our phones these days, from hailing a taxi to checking the weather. GPS co-ordination is a perfect example of how dependent we’ve become on having instantaneous access to this progressive technology; can you imagine going to meet a friend at a new bar or coffee shop and not being able to whip out your phone and check where it is? It seems crazy to operate in 2017 without the aid of Google Maps, and as future generations become more and more integrated with digital technology, this reliance will only become more pervasive.

Smartphone apps have revolutionized telemedicine to such a degree that we practically carry our doctors around in our pockets…or on our wrists!

Apps have revolutionized many different aspects of our lives, in many beneficial ways. There are apps to take seriously and apps to pass the time; each sector has its big hitters. One of the most positive places they’ve had an effect is the arena of telemedicine, where they are being integrated to the healthcare system in increasingly important ways. No matter where you are in the world, as long as you have a smartphone, you have access to a doctor. Imagine you’re out hiking in the wilds and get bitten by a suspicious looking insect; you don’t know what breed it is, and are worried the bite might be dangerous. You can simply open your smartphone and be chatting with a real doctor in mere minutes. Or imagine you’re snowbound for a few days and a member of your family is developing worrying symptoms; in days past, you’d have to wait until you had access to a physical doctor. These days, you can see one through your smartphone or tablet.

Doctors can even prescribe medication over the internet, through telemedicine apps. Take medical marijuana for instance, a previously controversial treatment which is now gaining legal traction in the U.S., having been legalized in twenty nine states so far; you can simply log on to a site such as MMJ Recs and get outfitted with a medical marijuana identification card, so you can start availing of the medicine for your specific condition. The possibilities of telemedicine are endless, and will only keep growing as technology progresses to accommodate them.

There are a lot of benefits to consider around telemedicine, and even more in the competitive app arena. Firstly, they make healthcare extremely convenient for everyone, no matter where you live. Previously, people who lived in rural areas or who were incapacitated had to travel miles to see their primary care physician, and probably even further to see a local specialist. Telemedicine removes the distance barrier, and ensures everyone has equal access to healthcare. Secondly, it’s reducing health costs across the board, on both sides of the line. Everyone knows the medical industry is an expensive game, but telemedicine is reducing costs for the patients and doctors, by allowing consultations to take less time. This frees up the doctor’s day, and also allows them to charge less to their patients, as well as negate any travel costs.

Telemedicine allows those who can’t get to a doctor regularly to have 24/7 medical access.

Another striking benefit comes from the app model itself. There are millions of apps out there that do so many different things, but competition in each sector is fierce. Healthcare apps are no different; thousands of them battle it out on the App Store and Google Play for browsers’ attention and ultimately downloads. This has a leveling effect, introducing competition to a sector which generally isn’t renowned for it, equaling better results at a lower cost for patients. As it stands, telemedicine is on the cusp of becoming a huge revolution in the healthcare industry, a revolution which is sure to happen in the next couple of years. It’s undoubtedly going to be a positive force in people’s lives, producing better results at a fast pace for a lower cost. All in all, apps are a perfect fit for telemedicine, and provide a fertile soil for its future growth. As digital technology is integrated more and more into our daily lives, telemedicine is set to become a regularity for residents all across the US.