健康教育研究与发展杂志

Telehealth, Telemedicine, Telenursing – 21st Century Progression towards Health for All

Abstract

K. L Radha, Gopichandran, Manju Dhandapani, Subhasankari and Payal KaholHote

Health and well-being are overlapping yet significantly differing concepts; the difference being in the dimensions of human life encompassed by each entity. The practice of health sciences is continuously evolving. As with most areas of science, recent decades have seen rapidly increasing progress in application of digital technology in medical field. In past few years, there has been a global boom in telehealth systems. Telehealth is a new technology, a new mode of health care delivery, a new industry and a new area of research. The generality of applications of telehealth in the field of medical care is still in an infancy stage. The term ‘Tele-health’ and ‘Telemedicine’ are interchangeable as per American Telemedicine Association (ATA) which characterizes Telemedicine to be “the natural evolution of healthcare in the digital world”. All stakeholders realize that the impact of technology in health care is inevitable and its applications in telehealth will be progressively expanded and diversified. Till recently, there was relatively spotted distribution in adoption of telehealth in the medical care; but COVID-19 pandemic has forced all healthcare systems, hospitals and clinics to rapidly implement the telehealth system and its widespread usage is now much visible. Establishing more up-to-date telehealth applications in medical care is a persistent need. The current urgency for telehealth systems has brought into focus aattention- to planning, preparing and processing capacity building, budgeting for infrastructure and resources for this field, increased awareness about staff’s technical and clinical competencies in this field, analyzing medical and legal issues in its usage and ensuring confidentiality and data safety.

The primary focus of this article is to examine the existing relevant literature on tele health/telemedicine in health sector - from early development to current applications, benefits of the telehealth during pandemic COVID-19, application to nursing domain, impediments to adopting telehealth systems and conclude with a look at future considerations in this field. Hopefully, it will contribute to guiding health care professionals, policy makers and nursing administrators to enhance existing knowledge, develop standard operating guidelines, technical competencies and capacity building for effective implementation of telemedicine in practice.