Introduction
Telemedicine is the delivery of the healthcare services and clinical information to a patient who is not in a hospital by the use of technology such as the internet, satellites and also the telephone media. This helps improve the patients' clinical health status. Other technological equipment that can be used include; smart phones, emails, two-way videos and many others that involve communication. Simply from a patient's point of view, it is the receiving of medical care from your doctor in the comfort of your home and with the continuous development, this is very possible.
There are a number of advantages of telemedicine. The first being the chance of saving the life when one is faced with an emergency situation where time is not enough to take the patient to the hospital. Another thing is that in some areas within the community some services in the hospitals may not be available, hence by the use of telemedicine, it is possible for the patients to get these services from other clinical institutions which are not located close to them via telemedicine. Also, in terms of safety telemedicine helps avoid the transmission of infectious diseases from the patient to the healthcare professional.
On the other hand, there are a few disadvantages associated with telemedicine include the cost that is incurred in setting up the equipment needed for the whole process and these involve the communication gadgets. Another disadvantage involves low quality of health informatics records which affects the clinics progress reports. Also, some other diseases require physical interactions with the doctors and the patients hence telemedicine cannot help.
When convincing the hospital Board of Directors to adopt this technology in the hospital it can be the hardest thing to get their approval because of some reasons which include; the cost of adopting the technology. They will defiantly feel that they are unwanted expenses to the hospital, hence finding it hard to approve the idea. Another problem is that most probably they will not see how the project will benefit the hospital and with the fact that its nature of man to deny the change. Hence, the process of convincing they will not be that easy.
