Looking back at our world right now, I must confess that there have been tremendous developments and that is thanks to technology. Technology advancements have been able to bring lots of innovations that have cut across every sector like finance, health and even to the academic sector.
Recently there have been a massive development and that is in the aspect of telemedicine. It has become the latest innovation that has equipped the healthcare sector and in fact have transformed the way medical services are been rendered to patients.
Talking about telemedicine, it means the use of technology majorly telecommunications to help provide healthcare services to people that are in need of it remotely. In recent years, telemedicine has become the latest solution that has helped to solve challenges of people finding it hard to have access to healthcare services probably due to their locations.
Come to think of it, telemedicine didn't just appear suddenly. It has been existing for many years and even till now. In fact, it first started with the radio technology. Radio was first used to give healthcare services to people living in areas that they cannot have access to healthcare. But as time goes on, with the technology advancements, we begin to see another dimension of which telemedicine was taking place. Thanks be to the innovation of artificial intelligence that has gained massive ground.
Now we have different ways which telemedicine takes place. There is the aspect of live video consultation where people book online video call with doctors in order to have access to healthcare services, there is also the use of some certain mobile apps that also helps to give healthcare services like helping to check high blood pressure, heartbeat, diabetes and many more. In fact recently, mobile health has become the most popular form of telemedicine that has been used.
There have been positive impact that telemedicine have been able to offer to the healthcare access. The first is it has helped to give healthcare services to areas that find it difficult to. Not only that, it has also helped to break a lot of barriers that people usually face towards healthcare services most especially people living in the rural areas. Most of the time, people living in rural areas always find it hard to have access to their healthcare services because of high cost, incompetent health professionals and even their locations also. But with telemedicine, it has been able to remove the barriers.
Even with the advantages that telemedicine offers, it also have it's own challenges that is been attached to it which I believe needs to be looked into. The first is the fact that not everyone living in the rural areas really have access to digital tools like Smartphones and even good network connectivity as these are the two major requirements to have access to telemedicine. Not only that, telemedicine most time struggle to give that privacy and security which Physical healthcare services will have offer.
But even with that, I am still so optimistic about the future directions of telemedicine. In decades to come, we will see it dominate the health sector because I am so sure those challenges will be settled. Not only that, those that might want to be obstacle right now will be worked upon. There will certainly be improved connectivity, enhanced AI integration, interoperability and many more. In years to come, I am so sure that Telemedicine is the future of healthcare sector and will be here for years to come. The more we will see technology Advancements, the more it will be better for Telemedicine.