Conclusions
The advent of telemedicine brings some very useful technology to the
medical community of the US and other countries. However, it is going to
be quite awhile before these technologies can be used to their greatest
extent.
Predictions:
-
The use of telemedicine
in Medicare and rural programs will steadily increase.
-
Issues of interstate
licensure and accreditation will be be resolved fairly easily with an interstate
license.
-
The specifics of
liability will be litigated in court and resolved to where they become
common.
-
Hopefully, telemedical
techniques will result in increased efficiency within all types of medicine,
increased accuracy
-
of diagnosis, and
increased reach and quality of medicine to those in need.
-
Also, malpractice
claims are mostly due to diagnostic errors. The increased accuracy of diagnosis
and increased
-
documentaion due
to telemedicine (everything would be on tape, not just a memory in the
physician's mind) should
-
result in a decrese
in malpractice cases.
-
Fewer specialist
referrals would result from increased availability of expert information
(by tele-consultation).
The biggest problem for the progress of telemedicine will be the access/security
debate. The solution to this debate depends entirely on how our country
decides issues such as intellectual property and encryption. Both of these
are integrally related to what might be done with medical records to keep
them confidential. For this reason, the barrier that security creates for
telemedicine can only be resolved in time.
Everything about the suggested programs for telemedicine also depends
on the hurdle of availability. WILL INTERNET SERVICES BE AVAILABLE TO ALL
AMERICANS? Within the answer to this question lies the answer to whether
telemedicine is going to be a beneficial product of the technological age.
Telemedicine, if used to it's full extent, has the potential to cause
great and far-reaching effects on the field of
medicine. These pages have been dedicated to showing the "best case
scenario" for which telemedicine could be
used. All this most certainly will not come to pass. The role of telemedicine
in the future may end up being much
smaller than it can be.
That is why it is important to take a look at the possibilities and
limitations now. In that way, we can make the most
of the technology that we are being presented with for the 21st Century.