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  • There’s a lot to be optimistic about in the future of telemedicine. With rapid advances in technology, it’s likely that telemedicine will only become easier and more widely accepted in the coming years. The rate that technology is progressing, telemedicine will of course need to overcome administrative barriers, such as restrictions placed on telemedicine practice by state legislation, state-specific licensing requirements by medical boards, and the reimbursement policies that affect whether doctors are reimbursed by payers and patients are not out-of-pocket. But with the projection that telemedicine will be a $36.3 billion industry by 2020, over 50 telehealth-related bills in the 113th Congress, and 75% of surveyed patients reporting interest in telemedicine, telemedicine’s future is bright and demand is likely to overcome these barriers (E-visit, 2018)


    Afbeeldingsresultaat voor whatsapp

    In the future, telemedicine could be filled in by communication apps for your mobile phone, like WhatsApp. ‘’ Clinicians have independently discovered that they can use their favourite instant messaging app to send text messages to colleagues to seek or give clinical advice, supplemented with images, video, or audio recordings made using their phone. This is counter to current conviction about how to implement scalable and sustainable telemedicine services. No needs or eHealth readiness assessment is undertaken, no business or change management plan formulated, no new software has to be installed, no training is required, and typically there is no budget.’’ (Mars, M., Morris, C., & Scott, R. E., 2019). Literature found in this article showed that clinicians use communication apps because of their simplicity, timeliness and cost-effectiveness. But it also shows that there are no general guidelines available for the use of communication apps in healthcare.  

    In another article written in 2018 Nikolic, A., Wickramasinghe, N., Claydon-Platt, D., Balakrishnan, V., & Smart, P. are describing positive points about using communication apps in healthcare. Doctors who were participating in this trial were positive, but the privacy policy can not be insured by using these communication apps. 

    The use of communication apps could be very useful in the future for telemedicine. But there is more research needed to develop guidelines and solutions, due to the privacy issues.

    In this E-Learning, a lot is written about the use of telemedicine for doctors, but for other professions, telemedicine can be helpful as well. Physiotherapy, speech and language therapy, dietician, and occupational therapist can use telemedicine as well.

     Telesurgery

    In 2001, the world’s first telesurgery was conducted by a surgical team in New York, USA. Since then, using telesurgery technology is at a halt. ‘further optimization of visual display, latency time, and haptic feedback technology, design and publication of further randomized controlled trials, and minimization of the factors that limit its clinical translation, telesurgery’s widespread implementation in clinical settings will become highly feasible’ (Choi, Oskouian & Tubbs, 2018).

    This video gives you an impression of telesurgery with the Sina robot

       

     

    There is already research going on about the use of 5G cellular technology. This technology is likely to improve remote assistance in telemedicine and real-time. If you are interested, the following article is about a pilot project that will use 5G cellular technology to enable remote assistance for surgical procedures in real-time. You can find it by clicking on this link:

    https://healthmanagement.org/c/healthmanagement/issuearticle/5g-opens-the-future-of-telesurgery