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PATIENT EMPOWERMENT NETWORK
Likewise, if the primary care doctor caring for a patient decided that she wanted a picture of something looked at and sent it to me electronically, then we call that an e-consult. Telehealth generally encompasses four areas: virtual visits, virtual consults, e-visits and e-consults. Digital Health has become a term of art because that includes everything from robotic process automation, to artificial intelligence, and so on.
What is telemedicine remote monitoring?
Honora Miller:
Well, remote monitoring is best suited for certain conditions, mostly chronic illness -- conditions like congestive heart failure or high blood pressure or diabetes, particularly type 2 diabetes, when it's helpful to have more data from the patient about their condition. For example, if you were starting out on blood pressure medication, we could give you a blood pressure cuff to take home, so that you could take your blood pressure for a week. The cuff, connected by Bluetooth, would automatically share your BP readings with your healthcare provider. That would be an example of home-monitoring. For people with heart failure, we might give them a wireless blood pressure cuff, weight scale and a device to measure oxygen levels in the blood, so that we can remotely monitor their vital signs. There are a variety of opportunities to monitor all types of health measures using wearable devices like an Apple Watch, and sensors, that can remotely monitor things like an EKG, sleep patterns, daily activity and other functions.
Dr. Kvedar:
Honora Miller: Is the monitoring done in real-time? Or do patients supply the data as it becomes available by entering it into a portal?
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