Can you imagine doctors and nurses working from home?
Well with the lockdown situations around the world and the surge in the need for people to stay in their homes, finding an alternative for the most hardworking fraternity today, that are our doctors and nurses has become a priority.
To avoid the spread of the novel coronavirus among the doctors, adopting the solutions that can help them treat their patients virtually is the urgent need of the time.
In the time when it’s not safe for the people to visit the hospital and surround themselves in the crowd of already infected people, opting for the use of telehealth apps is a better option for the patients as well as the doctors, as it will help the doctors and nurses to work from their safe zones while also providing the quality healthcare service to the people in need.
So let’s quickly look at why Telehealth apps can act as a silver lining in the situation of crisis for the healthcare industry.
Why are telehealth apps a good option in COVID-19?
In the situation of Quarantine, where people are advised to follow strict social distancing, Telehealth apps help people to visit their doctors virtually. With the facilities like automated chatbots that ask the patient about the real-life problems or illness, they feel in themselves, makes the process of diagnosis faster and easier.
These apps help people get the basic treatment for the symptoms they describe to the application and can get the advice directly from the doctor through voice chat and video calls sitting in the safe environment of their homes.
This takes us to focus on the exact benefits that come along the usage of Telehealth apps, so let’s look at some of those advantages.
Advantages of using Telehealth apps
● Broadens access to care
Many communities around the world need to travel a great distance for getting their basic treatment. With the available options like Telemedicine or Telehealth apps, the geographic barriers that kept these people away from their basic health treatments are reduced to a great extent as they can now get themselves quality health advice sitting in their home through these Telemedicine apps.
With its easy to use features and quicker access to doctors anytime, anywhere has made it accessible to more audiences to make use of it and provide specialized service irrespective of their geographic locations.
● Reduced chances of human error
Telehealth app is designed to replace the paperwork that piles up in the hospitals, like the case files and the prescriptions with the online generated virtual files. With this paperless solution, the chances of human errors that doctors and nurses might make due to heavy rush in their clinics become low.
Here all they need to do is select things from the available options and based on the software’s processing, it generates the patient’s file and prescriptions automatically. Here as it’s the pre-defined functions that do the work, the probability of errors reduces.
Reduced health care and other costs
Medication is the basic need for any individual living in this world, but as we all know the costs that are connected to get oneself a quality checkup is a way higher, especially for the one that comes below poverty lines.
Telemedicine apps help reduce the traveling costs of the patients, as it’s a virtual care solution, they do not need to transport the patient from one location to the other. Moreover, these apps also have some insurance policy features available for the underprivileged people to avail them directly on click and claim them, thus making the use of it faster and cost-effective for anyone to use.
Enhancement in the way doctors use to operate
For many decades we have been looking at how doctors need to rush to the patient, or the patient himself has to reach to the doctors to get themselves diagnosed. This traditional doctor-patient relationship can not be replaced by any application, but there are at least chances for advancement in this procedure with the Telemedicine apps.
With the virtual health care apps, the doctors can reduce the procedure by replacing the regular checkups, follow up visits or report collection visits with the video calls and the fax options of Telemedicine apps and thus making the process easier and faster, taking the medical industry a step ahead with the technology.
Telehealth apps in Canada that working well in COVID-19
Babylon telehealth app
Babylon app is an AI-based telehealth service application that helps people get the quality health checkup in their rooms. With the use of natural language processing and AI technology, this application provides a special feature called Symptom Checker which talks to the patient and understands their symptoms to suggest the right medication to be taken.
It also facilitates the doctors to make the diagnosis process way easier with the facilities like storing the patient’s calls and prescriptions, the status of the patients, his history and also regulates the process of appointment booking based on their availability through the application itself. This app does all that can be done by a human and thus reduces the need for human resources for the basic tasks.
Maple – Virtual health app
Maple is a virtual healthcare app that helps the patient to get the fastest access to the nearest licensed doctors to book the appointment. All the users need to do is login into the application and click on the “See the doctor” button and the application will show the list of 24/7 available doctors list to them.
The app also asks the patient to enter details about the symptoms they are feeling and then schedules an appointment with the nearest doctor based on the user’s location. The doctor checks the patient’s symptoms listed to check the feasibility for him to be treated at his clinic or on the application through the video call.
Why should every big healthcare service or venture opt for developing such personalized healthcare applications?
Looking at the situation we are in now, the need for the technical growth in healthcare operations is at a clear visual. In the times when people are dependent on the applications for their every basic need from grocery to clothes, taking medication virtually is the new booming concept for the healthcare industry.
In order to get their ventures and the medical team, ready to fight against the odds like coronavirus, shifting the focus towards virtual treatments can help the hospital and the health care centers to remain a step ahead in the industry. Developing a customized Telemedicine application for their hospitals is what the healthcare service owners and the business investors should focus on as their next profit-making investment.
Summing Up
The increasing burden on the healthcare industry calls for the rediscovery of applications like Telemedicine that can serve the patients on a frontline. The existence of such an outstanding alternative that can provide quality health care to the patients, also keeping the doctors and the nurses safe, is something every individual healthcare worker should think of.
