Telemedicine, Telehealth and Integrated Care

Today we have a convergence of telemedicine and videoconferencing technology, smaller and more powerful mobile devices, widespread wireless broadband data, and an emphasis on healthcare cost reduction, improved quality and patient satisfaction. It’s exciting, and one doesn’t have to think too hard to identify potential telemedicine applications for a particular medical specialty. While hospital-use cases are well defined, applications for extending the reach to care providers in homes and other settings are finally taking root, and mobility is key.

Developing a “mobile mind-set” can improve communications between out-of-hospital providers and their hospital and physician counterparts. As incentivized partnerships between players and payers develop, mobile telemedicine is being leveraged as a technology to bridge gaps in these new paradigms of care.

Take the Community Integrated Health Program in Louisiana’s East Baton Rouge Parish. Hospitals have partnered with East Baton Rouge EMS to conduct home visits to provide health education and assistance with managing chronic disease conditions. Early data has shown that unnecessary hospital transports and ED visits have been greatly reduced, and the project now moves into its next phase of helping to manage CHF and pediatric asthma patients. (For more see www.emsworld.com/12023351.)

A key element to Baton Rouge’s CIHP success is the use of mobile telemedicine technology (General Devices’ e-Bridge system) that allows patients, medics and physicians to consult live as well as offline by video clips and pictures to document activities for quality, training and legal purposes. EMS Medical Director Dan Godbee, MD, embraces the interaction. “I can do a more thorough evaluation, make a better diagnosis, provide better care and better answer the question ‘What do we need to do for this patient?’” Godbee says. All this is done using the existing mobile devices Godbee and his providers already carry.

There are other uses and users telemedicine and telehealth can benefit as well. The American Telemedicine Association notes that “Home telehealth technologies can support post-discharge, home health, chronic care management, schools, skilled nursing facilities, subacute care and senior living facilities.” They can give patients better access to and more control over their own care. Adds the ATA, “These applications extend the vision of the clinician to facilitate quicker assessment and proactive intervention for many populations living with chronic and acute healthcare problems.”

For techies like me, these are exciting times. Arguably, mobile telemedicine is a disruptive technology, and its core value is simply to help improve patient care. But it’s still pretty darn cool too.

—Curt Bashford, IHD Advisory Board