Thursday, 16 May 2024

Explained: Difference between Telehealth and Telemedicine

People often feel confused about the terms, telehealth, and telemedicine. Some feel they are the same terms, whereas others believe the two different concepts.

When you read medical blogs, articles, and doctor’s journals, you might get confused about the uses of the two terms. There is proximity among the two terms, but there are some parameters that distinguish the two services.

In this post, we will understand the ways that differentiate telehealth and telemedicine. So, let us get started:

Telehealth: 

The concept of telehealth is associated with a broad range of technologies and services to provide patient care and improve the healthcare delivery system.

Telehealth and telemedicine are different through the score of healthcare service. Telehealth provides medical services on a broader level in comparison to telemedicine services.

Telehealth consists of clinical and non-clinical medical services, such as medical training providers, administrative meetings, and continuing medical education. You read health blogs, fetch information through YouTube videos, all are the part of telehealth.

This service is a subset of E-health that includes the delivery of health information for health professionals and health consumers. Education and training of health workers are vital, and that is provided under the telehealth services.

Telemedicine: 

Telemedicine is an equally important subset of E-health. It uses technology (Computer, video, audio, phone, chat, internet) by a medical professional to treat their patients. Also, all the technology-related accessories are used by the patient located remotely to get medical assistance.

In the current crisis, where every corner is affected by the Corona virus. Staying out of the crowd or maintain a crisis is one of the ways to protect themselves.

However, the medical problem can enter at any moment; it could be normal viral fever, stomach, severe headache, skin problems, etc. In these situations, telemedical helps to get online doctor consultation and receive beneficial health advice.

Old age people often need to see a doctor, and they are at most risk of getting infected from the virus. For them, the service offered through telemedicine is a blessing. Unless there is an emergency, they don’t need to visit the hospital.

There is complete take care of privacy and security. All the patients’ reports and medical history keep secure, and nobody can steal the information and use them. Other video conferencing tools lack security features sometimes, but the telemedicine offered software is verified and developed with a multi-level security model.

Conclusion: 

Telehealth covers everything related to the medical sector and an outcome of the evolvement of the internet. Telemedicine is related to services provides to meet doctor’s online consultation.

To put in a simple word, we can say, all telemedicine is telehealth, but not all telehealth is telemedicine. Both the terms differ as per their horizon. When the concepts are clear, it is quite helpful to make a difference in the telehealth industry. Also, it gets easier to provide adequate services to the patients and other medical staff.