Telemedicine was touted in the FCC National Broadband Plan as a national priority with tremendous cost savings attached. The President recently singled out telemedicine in his State of the Union address, which is carefully vetted to ensure that only the most important initiatives are emphasized.
Telemedicine allows a patient to be connected with their physician or other healthcare provider, without having to be physically present. Telemedicine also facilitates healthcare by making a patient's medical history available to all members of the healthcare team, promoting a dedicated team approach to practicing medicine.
It's about a firefighter who can download the design of a burning building onto a handheld device; a student who can take classes with a digital textbook; or a patient who can have face-to-face video chats with her doctor." - President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, January 25, 2011.
As federal funding continues to be available for telemedicine and electronic medical records, many healthcare facilities and communities are connecting medical centers, doctor's offices and pharmacies to high speed Internet connections.
According to statistics reported by Jonathan Linkous, on Ihealthbeat.org:
- More than five million Americans had their medical images read remotely last year;
- Approximately 10% of all the intensive care unit beds in the U.S. use telemedicine;
- According to MobiHealthNews, there are more than 13,000 consumer health applications for the iPhone;
- One million Americans benefit from remote cardiac monitoring for implantable devices or for checking on a suspected cardiac arrhythmia; and
- The American Telemedicine Association estimates that more than 10 million Americans have directly benefited from some sort of telemedicine service this past year, probably double from just three years ago.
USDA Announces Support for Rural Mental Health Facilities
The future of telemedicine remains open to innovative applications for both the medical community and patients themselves. With the burgeoning demand for consumer applications on mobile devices, many applications will continue to be available for patients to take control of their own health. Devices to measure blood pressure, control diabetes, and transmit diagnostic information to physicians and other healthcare providers are available now.
The National Broadband Plan makes several recommendations for using high-speed broadband networks to increase the use of electronic health records and health data exchange. The FCC defines E-care as the electronic exchange of information — data, images and video — to help the practice of medicine and advanced analytics.
Julius Genachowski's Assessment of US Leadership in Broadband: FCC Chairman: Broadband Goals are Speed, Capacity, and Ubiquity
According to the Plan:
“Congress and the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) should consider developing a strategy that documents the proven value of e-care technologies, proposes reimbursement reforms that incent their meaningful use and charts a path for their widespread adoption.”
The National Broadband Plan sums up the inefficiencies and problems facing the healthcare industry:
"Rising costs would be less concerning if there were results. But Americans are not healthy. Sixty-one percent of American adults are overweight or obese, which often leads to medical complications. Chronic conditions, which already account for 75%3 of the nation’s health care costs, are increasing across all ages. The nation has 670,000 new cases of congestive heart failure every year, many of them fatal.5 And too often the care itself causes harm. One and a half million Americans are injured every year because of prescription drug errors, while a person dies every six minutes from an infection developed after arriving at a hospital."
New Mexico Governor Seeks Funding for Telemedicine: Governor Susana Martinez asking State Legislature to approve $600K in grants
The entire spectrum of healthcare providers have jumped on-board and embraced the concept of electronic medical records, e-mail communications with patients, and real-time medical test results. In the world of telemedicine, a patient in New York can be evaluated by a doctor in California, and can get a second opinion from a specialist in London - with everyone having instantaneous access to the patient's medical history and test results. In fact, the entire process of patient care, from patient intake and care, all the way through filling prescriptions and billing an insurance company can be entirely automated, without the necessity of printed forms.