Distributed Diagnosis and Home Healthcare

Contributors: Bichlien Hoang Ashley Caudill

Originally published on the IEEE Emerging Technology portal, 2006 - 2012. Visit: http://www.ieee.org/go/emergingtech

The U.S. healthcare industry is wrought with challenges including an aging population and an increased financial burden for government, employers, and individuals. Lack of accessible healthcare for the uninsured, complex medical practices and accompanying paperwork, and inefficient communication also present difficulties. [1] Telemedicine, the use of communication and information technologies to provide patient care and share clinical information, is a possible cure for these ailments. The term telehealth expands the definition of telemedicine-providing medicine at a distance-to include non-clinical services such as education and research. The use of telemedicine techniques could both reduce the cost and improve the quality of healthcare by enhancing patient-provider relationships and reducing clinical errors. Telemedicine services include specialist referral services, patient consultations, remote patient monitoring, medical education and provision of consumer medical and health information. Simple telephone communication between health care professionals or doctors and patients qualifies as telemedicine, but there are also several other technologies are being employed in the practice of distributed and home healthcare. Real-time applications include videoconferencing, which allows health care professionals to have synchronous audio and visual interaction with their patients, while asynchronous applications include transmission of text or graphic biomedical data, with robotics and virtual reality interfaces being used experimentally. Telemedicine provides patients with more control and authority over their own care via maintenance of electronic health records and use of home diagnostics to monitor vital signs, such as home glucose tests for diabetic patients. Distributed diagnostics are inexpensive tests which provide prompt, on-site results and home-based devices for disease diagnosis or monitoring of treatment and disease progression. Such technologies enable users to monitor their own health and could lead to more preventative measures that could reduce the need for emergency treatment. Telemedicine is being used across several medical fields including orthopedics, general surgery, internal medicine, dermatology, urology, gastroenterology, neurology, psychology, pediatrics and psychiatry. Telemedicine enhances medical care in many of these domains by bringing hard-to-get or specialized care into developing countries, rural and remote areas where healthcare may be deficient.

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Distributed Diagnosis and Home Healthcare

Contributors: Bichlien Hoang Ashley Caudill

Originally published on the IEEE Emerging Technology portal, 2006 - 2012. Visit: http://www.ieee.org/go/emergingtech

The 1st Transdisciplinary Conference on Distributed Diagnosis and Home Healthcare (D2H2) held April 2-4, 2006, addressed several issues related to telemedicine, including point-of-care diagnostics, home devices, electronic/personal health records, telemedicine and interoperability, security and standards, future doctor-patient relationships, and policies and strategies. Security and privacy in telemedicine practice are of increasing concern with the passage of HIPAA regulations concerning medical privacy. To ensure secure and reliable transport of healthcare information, policy is being developed regarding a National Health Information Network (NHIN), that will make use of leading-edge networking technologies, such as web services, mobile communications, and multimedia communications. Non-technical barriers to the use of telemedicine include lack of user trust, the necessity to alter business models, insurance reimbursement, licensing across state and country borders and other medical and legal matters, such as electronic record privacy, intellectual property matters and malpractice liability. [2] The American Medical Associations promotion of quality telemedicine policy addresses several of these issues. [3] Health Level Seven (HL7) Application Protocol for Electronic Data Exchange in Healthcare Environments (version 2) is a standard for exchanging messages among information systems that implement healthcare applications and is the most widely implemented standard for healthcare information in the world. [4] Additional technical standards which relate to telemedicine include: electronic commerce, transferal of radiologic images, and narrow band visual telephone systems and terminal equipment, commonly used in interactive live video applications for telemedicine. Clinical telemedicine standards relate to telehomecare, telepathology, teleradiology, and telepsychiatry among other practices. [5] The World Health Organization (WHO) is working to promote telemedicine on an international level. The WHO resolution on eHealth, which was passed during the 58th World Health Assembly in Geneva, on May 23, 2005, urges Member States to develop a national eHealth strategy, including legal and infrastructure frameworks and public-private partnerships, mobilize multi-sectoral collaboration, and establish national eHealth centers and networks of excellence, among other recommendations. The resolution also posed requests to the Director-General including: promote international collaboration, provide technical support, facilitate integration of eHealth in the health systems, continue to promote health awareness and healthy lifestyle through eLearning services, such as the Health Academy, support interregional initiatives among groups of countries that speak a common language, document the best practices and report on them.

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Distributed Diagnosis and Home Healthcare

Contributors: Bichlien Hoang Ashley Caudill

Originally published on the IEEE Emerging Technology portal, 2006 - 2012. Visit: http://www.ieee.org/go/emergingtech

The U.S. Military Health Systems delivers healthcare to 9.2 million beneficiaries across the globe and is an early adopter of e-health practices. Both the TRICARE e-health web portal and AHLTA (Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application), the militarys electronic health record system, secure the militarys position at the forefront of telemedicine technology. This globally accessible system maintains patient information from military treatment facilities around the world and provides a single, secure, complete, legible, and durable record to ensure continuity of care for beneficiaries regardless of where the patient is treatedon the battlefield, home, or elsewhere. [6] References [1] Kim, Yongmin. Christina C. White, David Fang, Eung-Hun Kim, William B. Lober. Improving Healthcare Quality Through Distributed Diagnosis and Home Healthcare (D2H2), Proceedings of the 1st Distributed Diagnosis and Home Healthcare (D2H2) Conference, Arlington, Virginia, USA, April 2-4, 2006. [2] American Medical Association. The Promotion of Quality Telemedicine. [3] Health Level Seven (HL7). http://www.hl7.org. [4] American Telemedicine Association. Telemedicine Guidelines and Technical Standards Affecting Telemedical Transmissions. [5] "Health IT Advisor." Military Medical Technology, Volume 10, Issue 3, May 08, 2006.

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