Telemedicine – specialized medical care regardless of the distance
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Telemedicine is a way of providing medical services in situations where the distance between the doctor and the patient is the most critical factor. This modern approach is officially admitted in many developed countries and is actively used worldwide. Due to constantly advancing technical background doctors quickly and effectively help patients all over the world. For instance, created by qualified professionals medical document management system E-doc allows you to store all kinds of visualization studies (CT, MRI, PET-CT, etc.) and forward them to the attending physician safely and easily whenever this is necessary.
Content
- Why we need telemedicine
- State-of-art medical document management system E-doc
- Using E-doc – as easy as pie
- E-doc – consultations of world famous specialists without traveling abroad
Why we need telemedicine
The main aim of telemedicine is to provide every patient with the help of qualified healthcare professionals. It is possible due to the Internet and special ways of the data transferring. This creates fundamentally new conditions for communication between the doctor and the patient – remote communication without a personal appointment.
Nowadays the patient can communicate with the doctor remotely, receive alternative opinion from other doctors of the same specialty or consult a multidisciplinary team of experienced specialists in difficult cases. In the field of surgery it has become possible to perform "remote interventions", when more experienced colleagues monitor the process using video communication.
Telemedicine helps healthcare professionals to improve skills and exchange practical experience. Lectures and workshops of international medical organizations are often performed in the format of videoconferences with simultaneous translation into other languages, if necessary. Thanks to this lecturers and participants don`t waste time to get to the conference location.
Naturally, distance counseling requires modern equipment, stable access to the Internet and special software. Protection of the patient's personal data is of the primary importance, as well. Easy-to-use medical document management system E-doc corresponds to all the requirements for data transmission quality and security. Further we will discuss advantages of the E-doc system and its principles of work.
State-of-art medical document management system E-doc
Virtually all fields of medicine use advantages of visualization studies. Neurology and neurosurgery, cardiology, vascular surgery, oncology, orthopedics and traumatology, pulmonology, rheumatology and other specialties investigate inner picture of the organism. Quick and competent assessment of the results by a qualified specialist is utterly important for choosing the most appropriate treatment scheme. For example, this significantly influences choosing the approach in patients with acute myocardial infarction, or those who require replacement of heart valves or arthroplasty. Medical document management system E-doc provides healthcare professionals and patients with such an opportunity.
E-doc is suitable for few types of investigations. The system successfully works with the results of:
- Digital radiography (X-ray examination)
- Computed tomography (CT)
- Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
- Positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT)
- Coronary angiography
- Angiography of other blood vessels
You can simultaneously upload results of different studies (e.g. CT and X-ray examination) to the profile. This provides doctor with comprehensive information. In addition, E-doc allows uploading results of several consecutive investigations and monitoring the dynamics of treatment process. This is important, for example, in the fractures healing, osteosynthesis or assessing the degree of blood vessels patency.
- E-doc «reads» different types of files. Different manufacturers of medical equipment, for example, Samsung, Philips, etc., offer their own software for viewing results of the investigations. Using E-doc you don`t need any of these numerous programs anymore, as the system successfully recognizes all file formats. You doctor will also have a rest from various software, being able to open results of all visualization studies using the sole system – E-doc. This significantly saves time of patients and healthcare professionals. Type of each investigation (e.g. CT, X-ray) is determined by the system automatically.
- E-doc preserves quality of the images. Accuracy is extremely important in evaluation of visualization studies results; all possible mistakes should be avoided. Indeed, difference of several millimeters plays a huge role in determining the size of a tumor, the degree of the blood vessel narrowing, or selection of an individual prosthesis for arthroplasty. E-doc saves all images in their original quality, and also offers few modes of reviewing the data (e.g. magnification, contrast).
- E-doc makes sending results to your doctor much easier. Using E-doc, you don`t need to create archive with information from the CD, upload it to file hosting service and forward the link to the doctor (who will, correspondingly, need to unpack files and use special program to open the image). E-doc will save the necessary files from the CD and the doctor will receive a simple link directly for viewing images. You will be able to do all of this by yourself, even in case you are not that good with the computer.
- E-doc fully meets all the requirements of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which became enforceable on the 25th of May 2018. The system reliably protects medical information and transfers it to the treating doctor in encrypted form after receiving the patient's consent.
- E-doc offers 30 GB of free space for uploading and storing the medical data. According to the practical experience, this is totally enough for saving case history of a person. Creating the personal account is also free of charge. When you work with E-doc you don`t need to store large files with researches on the PC or worry about the safety of CDs anymore. You save space on your hard disk and, which is more important, your nerve cells.
- E-doc provides the access to the files from different devices. Internet connection is the only thing you need to log in the system and review the information. You can use any PC or even mobile device for this. Thus, you can see the data regardless of the place – from home, doctor`s office or even table in the restaurant.
- E-doc doesn`t limit the period of storing medical data. All the information will always be available in your personal account. You will easily find earlier studies if the doctor wants to evaluate them in dynamics. Files are displayed in the chronological order, which facilitates searching through them.
- E-doc offers real-time communication with the treating physician. In addition to storing medical information, the portal develops its own video messenger for simple and secure video communication between the patient and healthcare professional. Using E-doc makes personal discussion of the control examinations results and adjustment of the further treatment plan directly with a foreign specialist real.
Using E-doc – as easy as pie
DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) standard is the basis of work of the medical document management system E-doc. This international standard is designed to create and share digital images. DICOM is the most widely used medical information exchange standard in the world. What is also important, it is supported by substantially all medical devices.
Interface of the E-doc system is simple and intuitive. After going to the web-site e-doc.eu you should either register yourself in the system as a new user, or log in using the email address and password if you already have a personal account. The whole process of registration takes few minutes and is free of charge. After logging in to your personal account, you can view the results of previous investigations, which can be found in such folders:
- «Favorites» – chosen investigations that are important for you or need additional attention of your treating physician
- «Recent» – all the data that has been uploaded to the system during the last days
- «DICOM» – all uploaded to the system investigations
- «Trash» – unnecessary investigations, which you don`t need to store anymore
When you want to upload a new file into the system, you simply “drag” the entire content of the CD to the DICOM tab with the left mouse button. The system will select the necessary files from the whole list, upload them and generate ready-to-view images. When the process is completed, a new file appears on the DICOM tab. Each new file contains the following information – name of the study, date of the study, your name, date of birth and sex. To watch the image in the full size you should click it with the left mouse button.
When you want to send the results of investigation to your treating physician or other healthcare specialist, you should right-click on the file and select the “Share” option from the dialogue box. After that, the system will create an individual link for you. Using this link the doctor will have direct access to ready-to-view images. To watch detailed video instructions for working with the E-doc system:
Instruction E-Doc
E-doc – consultations of world famous specialists without traveling abroad
Telemedicine is not aimed to replace live communication with a doctor; the purpose of this technique is to make such communication more simple and effective. Thus, after the first comprehensive consultation in person or treatment performing (e.g. joint replacement, stenting of the coronary vessels, medical treatment of stroke, etc.), patients who require long-term rehabilitation or treatment of a chronic disease can switch to distant counseling. In the developed countries, e.g. in Germany, distant consultations with a doctor are covered by insurance companies as a usual medical service.
Medical document management system E-doc was developed by the Booking Health company, an international operator of medical tourism. Many years' practical experience in this field led the company to the necessity of creating special electronic medical document management system. When implementing it into life, the company has pursued several goals:
- Providing international patients with consultations of world-class specialists. Such consultations help to clarify the diagnosis or adjust prescribed in the native country treatment (so-called “second opinion”). The most complicated and ambiguous cases are discussed by the multidisciplinary board of specialists.
- Organization of preliminary consultations with a foreign specialist before coming for treatment. This helps to determine the tactics of treatment in advance and sometimes – to choose a more specialized clinic and specialist. For example, a cardiosurgeon can choose more individual type of intervention for prosthetics of the heart valve or stent installation in the coronary artery.
- Organization of more comfortable for the international patients system of the postoperative follow-up – the distant one. For example, after the placement of fully implantable motorized intramedullary nail Fitbone® a patient needs to visit doctor every 2 weeks to monitor the bone growth process. E-doc makes it possible to undergo examination at home and sent the results to the doctor directly, without obligatory staying abroad for a long term.
The company Booking Health is always ready to help patients in the organization of:
- Preliminary distant consultations with the professor before coming for the treatment
- Comprehensive check-up for determining or verification of the diagnosis
- Conservative treatment with up-to-date medications
- Specialized surgical treatment
- Postoperative recovery and rehabilitation
- Postoperative distant follow-up
To receive distant consultation of foreign experts or start preparing for a treatment trip, you need to leave a request on the web-site of the company Booking Health . We are always glad to help you in improving and maintaining your health.
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Authors:
The article was edited by medical experts, board certified doctors Dr. Nadezhda Ivanisova, Dr. Sergey Pashchenko. For the treatment of the conditions referred to in the article, you must consult a doctor; the information in the article is not intended for self-medication!
Source:
WHO - World Health Organization
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