How Telemedicine Revolutionizes Healthcare

The 2020 pandemic, lockdown, and hospitals’ overloads have highlighted the existing problems in healthcare. The industry wasn’t prepared for such major challenges. The hospitals and medical staff could not cope with the influx of patients. Healthcare facilities were understaffed and underequipped. However, the situation has also shown ways to improve the industry, including telehealth app development.

The usual healthcare system was disrupted, and many people were unable to visit their doctors for face-to-face appointments regularly. These circumstances have increased the demand for companies offering telemedicine app development solutions. They allowed people to receive safe, effective, easily accessible, and sometimes life-saving patient care.

Now that the pandemic is over, telehealth applications are still on the rise. They allow medical professionals to carry out their appointments with patients online via video, audio, or text messages. Some applications also offer e-prescriptions, appointment booking, file transfer, and billing. Telemedicine apps have brought about numerous innovations that indeed have revolutionized the healthcare industry.

Internet of Medical Things

One of the telemedicine use cases is Remote Patient Monitoring systems (RPM). This software can collect, report, and analyze patient health data outside healthcare institutions, such as hospitals and clinics. In order to do so, the RPM apps are connected to IoT-based smart wearables, collecting the wearer’s health data anytime and anywhere. After that, the patient’s vitals, like heart rate, blood pressure, glucose, and blood oxygen levels, are analyzed by healthcare professionals using medical software. 

Based on the collected health data, doctors can get a complete overview of patients’ health, identify early signs of diseases, and detect abnormalities. Internet-connected wearable devices allow physicians to track the vitals of high-risk patients, including the elderly, post-operative, and chronic disease patients. This provides valuable and accurate insights into their health indicators and minimizes their exposure.

AI and ML

Another innovative application of telehealth technology is medical imaging software. It uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to derive information from images and analyze it. The software is mainly used for MRI/CT/PET scan processing. Thanks to the digitalization of the process, scans can be sent to any clinic, even abroad, and returned back with analysis and a possible diagnosis within hours.

Medical imaging software allows medical technicians to create customized 3D models for patients. For instance, human anatomy 3D modeling is used to generate and print out actual models of a patient’s teeth before a planned orthodontic treatment. It also can be used to design and print medical equipment or even human body parts, like coronary stents needed for cardiovascular surgery or artificial limbs.

AI and ML are also used in preventive medicine. The algorithms are able to analyze large amounts of data and spot patterns and trends that might have been missed due to human error. Thanks to AI, some illnesses, like cancer, can be detected years earlier compared to traditional diagnostic methods. This means that technologies help mitigate diseases and actually save lives. Using AI and ML reduces healthcare expenses, improves diagnosis accuracy, speeds up disease detection, and enhances overall care quality.

Mental Health

Telemedicine has significantly contributed to the development of the mental healthcare system. Online therapy helps deliver mental wellness services to a wider audience, making them more accessible to diverse populations. While the primary goal of mental health apps is psychotherapy, specialists also assist patients with treating such conditions as depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, OCD, anxiety, and more.

Virtual sessions remove numerous barriers that stop many people from going into therapy. For instance, this field was highly stigmatized just a few years ago. Today, no one is surprised when you talk about psychotherapy. Geographical limitations are also no longer an obstacle, as the apps allow people to seek help and support from the comfort and privacy of their own homes. Mental health applications provide video, audio, and text message formats so patients can choose a convenient way to communicate with their therapists.

Increased Data Security and Privacy

The healthcare industry has always dealt with large amounts of sensitive data, i.e., medical, personal, and sometimes even financial information. Therefore, the greatest challenge was keeping it safe and protected from tampering and theft. Blockchain technology in healthcare provides unprecedented user data security while making the data exchange more transparent, collaborative, and trustworthy. This is especially important in telemedicine, where patients want to be sure that their medical data is not shared with third parties but sent directly to their physician.

In addition, all healthcare software development companies must comply with specific regulatory requirements in order to launch their products. One of the key regulations is HIPAA. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) describes how mHealth products collect, process, and distribute personal user data. It guarantees a reliable level of security and minimizes the threat of possible data loss and hacking.

As evidenced by statistics, healthcare software development services are thriving and attracting more and more funding with time. Investor funding for the digital health domain reached nearly $45 billion in 2021, which was double the previous year and by far the largest amount since 2010. This clearly demonstrates the growing interest of investors and the importance of digital solutions development. And it’s not surprising, considering all the benefits of telemedicine apps and the way they revolutionize the industry.