Telemedicine & Medical Tourism: In The Wake Of COVID-19

What is Telemedicine?

Ever sent a health question to your healthcare provider through a patient portal? If yes, then you have probably experienced a type of telemedicine! Sometimes called "telehealth" or "virtual healthcare," telemedicine offers healthcare from a distance through electronic information systems.

In the early days, telemedicine delivered care through the telephone. But, today, telemedicine has encompassed a wide range of electronic delivery systems that include secure messaging via email or text, mobile health apps, live video chats, and even online visits.

Sometimes, during a virtual visit, your healthcare professional can diagnose and treat your condition based on your interview and the visual signs of your condition/illness. However, there are times when a virtual visit can become a triage tool that helps your healthcare provider in directing you to a particular course of action.

The Role of Telemedicine in Medical Tourism

Medical Tourism, originally, is designed to help people travel to destinations where medical treatment is less expensive. The role of telemedicine in the Medical Tourism Industry is to provide additional services to medical tourists, allowing them to have real-time conversations with care providers from any part of the world. A direct video consultation through telemedicine has allowed several patients to make more informed decisions. The best part -- people look at a website, get a video consultation, make a choice, and jump on a plane!

Telemedicine has improved efficiency, quality, and customer service in Medical Tourism applications. One of the significant benefits of telemedicine in the Medical Tourism industry is the potential improvement of the process and quality of pre- and post-operative care. Today, there are several preoperative telemedicine applications. Remote collection of baseline data, performing preoperative physical examinations, and provision of patient education has been successfully executed by many healthcare providers worldwide, only via telemedicine.

The tool has been offering potential improvement in the provision of exclusive customer service to numerous medical tourists worldwide. For example, preoperative video-conferencing has allowed patients, surgeons, family members, and other key medical staff to meet face-to-face virtually.

Moreover, telemedicine helps in providing postoperative care to the patients via virtual follow-up visits after they return home. It has also enabled healthcare providers to evaluate wound healing remotely. In this way, the level of connectedness increases, helping improve the continuity of care throughout the perioperative period with the patient and his/her care provider in the home country.

Telemedicine in the wake of COVID-19

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has certainly wreaked havoc, infecting lacs of people worldwide. Government officials of various countries have published telemedicine guidelines to bolster healthcare delivery practices to people in urgent need of care.

In this period, telemedicine promises to provide the safety of patients and healthcare professionals worldwide. It has certainly given a chance to many medical tourists to stay at home and virtually connect with a healthcare professional in any part of the world. This, in turn, will help patients make informed decisions before taking a flight to the destination country, once the COVID-19 crisis subsides.

Moreover, many healthcare providers and government bodies are discouraging people from traveling to other countries, telemedicine services might represent a more efficient way to receive initial or preoperative care.

Because of its easy accessibility and convenience, the COVID-19 outbreak has driven a mass adoption of telemedicine and virtual visits, nowadays. Affordability, being one more asset, telemedicine might represent the future of healthcare delivery in the post-coronavirus world.

Telemedicine and Medical Tourism in India

Although, this is a very challenging time for the world, the most vulnerable, today, are the patients with underlying medical conditions, such as cancer. Unfortunately, the people with such conditions who travel to India for affordable treatment are left waiting in their home countries due to the COVID-19 outbreak!

To their relief, Digital Health in India has taken a monumental step to help such medical tourists get access to timely and quality healthcare via telemedicine. One of the significant advantages of telemedicine services in India is saving of effort and cost, as vulnerable patients will not have to travel long distances for obtaining preoperative consultation and care.

It is an excellent solution for providing faster and timely access to patient education as well as in the reduction of financial costs associated with long travel. This will enable medical tourists to get medical opinions from various healthcare professionals, make a choice and hop on a plane to India for their surgeries once the ongoing outbreak dissolves.

About IndiCure

At IndiCure, we are fortunate to be part of the healthcare sector that people worldwide are at present the most in need of. Being the leader in the Medical Tourism Industry in India, we are affiliated with some of the best doctors that are now offering consultations through Telemedicine.

Ranging from the transmission of patient histories and digital photographs for diagnostic consultation to interactive patient physical examination and remote monitoring of physiologic data for disease management; IndiCure is offering a continuum of successful telemedicine services amid the COVID-19 crisis.

You can choose to share your medical reports or pictures of the target areas for plastic surgery, and we shall send you a detailed treatment plan followed by a telephonic or a video consultation by our doctors in India. 

IndiCure is one of the largest and most renowned medical tourism companies in India offering medical treatment in association with the best surgeons and hospitals in India. You can write to us at info@indicure.com or call us at +91-9320036777 (India).

Sponsor Ads

• Ad Space Available - Rent it Now!

Report this Page

Created on Apr 1st 2020 06:18. Viewed 518 times.

Share on APSense

Comments