Telemedicine (4)

Telemedicine and Application Areas

Telemedicine is used in many areas in the world. These areas are:

Diagnosis: In cases where it is difficult to diagnose, it is the evaluation of the results that require expertise, sending the patient’s information and examination results to the specialist center, clinic, physician or specialist via communication methods. With these communication tools, the patient’s file information, visuals about the lesion location (tele dermatology), radiology (tele radiology) and nuclear medicine images (tele nuclear medicine), ECG, (tele cardiology), EEG (tele neurology), microscope images (tele pathology), Diagnostic information such as endoscope images are sent to other centers by means of communication.

Treatment: Re-arrangement of the treatment with the support of the physician, specialist, clinic or specialist center with teleconsultation can make recommendations to the patient or physician. It is also used in the treatment of mental and nervous disorders (telepsychiatry). Studies towards surgical operation attempts by robotic surgeons are progressing quite rapidly (telesurgery). Nowadays, cholecystectomy and appendectomy are among the surgical procedures performed from kilometers away.

Education: The use of telemedicine is advancing rapidly in the field of education with the developments in technology. Internet-based solutions have made it possible for long-distance healthcare workers to meet their training needs without leaving their places. It can be used in the field of telemedicine education in cases where experts are far away, patients who are in the field of specialization, medical tools or medical information are far away, and when the relevant people are in contact with each other. Telemedicine is a constant education tool between doctor-doctor, doctor-patient. Telemedicine is used in education in the field of health through teleconferencing, in medical education programs, in the creation of databases containing information such as patient files and clinical information, radiological and pathological images, and in virtual hospital applications.

Research: Telemedicine technologies provide tools to use resources from multiple centers to conduct a comprehensive research or to investigate a rare event. The human genome database research, which has gained importance in recent years, is an example of this.

Management: Accessing medical and health-related data to managers in central units helps them to make quality control and decisions. The evaluation of these data has become very easy with the development of technologies in the field of telemedicine.

Medical follow-up and treatment control: If the treatment applied to the patient needs to be followed closely, it is aimed to decrease the treatment costs and increase the quality of life before the patient comes to the place where the treatment is applied.

Triage decision in accidents and natural disasters and pre-transfer evaluation and planning: Considering the natural disasters and accidents that our country has experienced and may experience, telemedicine should be one of the important projects for our country.

Public health and preventive medicine: By creating databases and patient records on the internet, it is possible to inform physicians, specialists, health service providers and the society.