Telemedicine

The term telemedicine indicates the set of technologies and methods used to carry out remote diagnosis and treatment. The actors who participate in the provision of a Telemedicine service are: patients/caregivers, doctors and other healthcare professionals.

What is Telemedicine?

“Telemedicine is the set of medical and IT techniques that allow remote patient care and more generally to provide remote health services”.

Telemedicine platforms are created to communicate quickly and efficiently, all data is managed in a single virtual place to be provided to the customer in the clearest and easiest way possible.

Telemedicine will never replace the experience and knowledge of a doctor, but it can be one more tool to bring this knowledge closer to the largest number of patients possible, wherever they are and whatever their condition or social background.

What is Telemedicine for?

Telemedicine ensures equity of access to health care, in particular, for inhabitants of remote areas. It improves the quality of assistance and guarantees its continuity.

It allows for greater efficacy of treatments having the possibility of providing more data, efficiency and appropriateness of communication and more timeliness of interventions.

Telemedicine allows the containment of costs. There is more time and more resources available for better management of health expenditure.

What are the benefits of Telemedicine?

Diffusion. The immediacy and speed of the service.
Ease of use.
Maximum respect for privacy legislation. Indeed, it is not necessary to provide your contact telephone number to the patient.
Possibility to connect from anywhere for both: the doctor and the patient.
Ability to send documents in real time.

Telemedicine in numbers

Dr. Chiara Sgarbossa, director of the Digital Health Innovation Observatory of the Milan Polytechnic, attested that only 5% of the doctors contacted used telemedicine methods before the pandemic period. Subsequently, 75% of doctors ‘converted’ to telemedicine solutions. Among the general practitioners interviewed, only 5% are completely against it.

According to family doctors (out of the total number of doctors interviewed), 30% of visits could take place remotely. According to specialist doctors, 25% of visits could be carried out remotely, taking into consideration patients with chronic pathologies to be monitored with a certain frequency. The percentage drops to 18% in the case of other types of patients.