Telehealth vs. Telemedicine: A Complete Overview of the Technology

The healthcare industry is growing rapidly as professionals and facilities explore ways to increase patient access to care while decreasing overall healthcare costs. Luckily, digital technology makes it simple for healthcare practitioners to communicate with their patients, reducing the hurdles that usually hinder individuals from seeking medical treatment.

If you reside in the city, getting your doctor’s appointment might be difficult due to heavy traffic, massive parking structures, and long waiting room times. It is also sometimes possible for those living in rural locations to see a doctor due to obstacles such as long driving distances, limited access to specialists, and long wait periods. While the pandemic has impacted our globe, there has been great progress in the direction of telehealth and telemedicine.

Thanks to Telehealth App and Telemedicine Apps, patients can now consult their doctors without difficulties with this advanced communication technology. Even if these two terms are used interchangeably, their meanings are completely different. It doesn’t matter if you’re a patient or a provider; it’s critical to understand what these terms mean and what services they provide. 

Without much delay, let’s begin!

What Does Telemedicine Mean?

Telemedicine is a practicing medicine that uses information and digital technology to deliver care from afar. Follow-Up visits, chronic disease care, managing medications, expert consultation, and a wide range of other clinical services can all be performed remotely via telemedicine technology’s secure video and audio. However, it is confined to the provision of clinical services.

What Does Telehealth Mean?

Telehealth is the practice of enhancing long-distance clinical and non-clinical health care via the use of electronic data and communication technologies. Non-clinical services provided by telehealth services include public health, practitioner training, patient and professional health education, and health administration.

Examples of telehealth and telemedicine digital data include videos, digital photographs, and text files stored on computers. The following four delivery techniques comprise all telehealth and telemedicine events:

• Video Conferencing
• Storing and Forwarding
• Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM)
• mHealth

Video Conferencing

Telehealth refers to videoconferencing between an expert and a medical student, and Telemedicine refers to videoconferencing between a patient and a doctor.

Synchronous telehealth or video conferencing refers to any technology that allows direct connection between customers and their healthcare specialists. This category features video chats with physicians and nurses using the Live Video Call. It not only reduces travel time and stress for both patients and healthcare API providers, but it also aids in the expansion of healthcare access in rural and other remote regions.

Perks  of Video Conferencing

• Telemedicine and video conferencing make communication more secure and efficient.
• It saves time and money.
• Medical video conferencing helps bridge geographical gaps between clinicians and patients.
• Increased efficiency and productivity.
• Remote telehealth increases patient retention.

Store and Forward

It is nothing but the technique used by telemedicine and telehealth service providers to collect, store, and disseminate access to patient medical data that doctors can use to provide quality care. Any technique that captures a patient’s data, saves it on a cloud-based platform and makes it available to a healthcare provider in another location falls under this category.

The activities done in the store and forward method are as follows:

• In response to the responses, software-driven surveys ask particular questions to the patient and automatically choose more questions to probe deeper into the patient’s projected conditions.
• The telemedicine app develops an intelligent questionnaire for the patient in order to obtain the necessary clinical data.
• As the doctor can see all the important information at a glance, he or she can quickly assess the patient and plan a treatment strategy.

The store and forward method have the following advantages:

• Easy to use and secure.
• Flexibility in scheduling.
• Reduces the workload of specialists.
• Convenience.
• Reduced diagnosis and treatment wait times.
• Second opinions.
• Detailed data analysis.
• Eliminates linguistic and cultural barriers.

Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM)

Remote patient monitoring is a technique of providing healthcare API that relies on cutting-edge information technology to collect patient data outside of traditional healthcare facilities.

Perks of RPM;

• Better patient outcomes.
• Higher compliance rates.
• Reduces the likelihood of disease transmission.
• Cost savings from faster access to better patient data.

mHealth

mHealth is similar to remote patient monitoring. Tablets can be used to deliver telehealth and telemedicine services, whereas smartphones are associated with mHealth. Fitbits, iwatches, and heart rate monitors are examples of wearable devices that can help patients in tracking their health. It lets users monitor their sleep, heart rate, blood sugar levels, etc.

Integrating telemedicine API or telehealth API into your practice generally requires secure HIPAA-compliant software, fast internet connectivity, multiple devices, and staff training.

Telehealth vs. Telemedicine – Which Technology is Best?

Conclusion

Overall, the main difference between telemedicine and telehealth is that the former only relates to remote medical services, while the latter also includes non-medical services. In simple terms, Telehealth is a subset of Telemedicine.

We hope this Telehealth vs. Telemedicine blog post has explained how they differ and how one is a subset of the other.

Good luck!