Health Data

Goal of this paper

Tele-Medicine (Tele-Med) also called Tele-Health, needs a formulation of a vision and workplan.

This document tries to reflect on the issues, and make some suggestions.

Introduction

And then there was Corona / COVID-19: improvisations like ‘eHealth over Skype’ (or WhatsApp, Zoom, or . . . ) may have served in the emergency situation with people subject to lockdown or other restrictive measures, but cannot be considered a longer-term solution, if already a solution in the first place.

Instead, the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the need for real Tele-Med:

• The inability of patients, medical personnel and caregivers to meet physically under lock-down
• To protect patients and medical personnel and caregivers against the risks of infecting each other
• To keep ‘light’ and non-COVID-19 patients away from overloaded hospitals and contamination risks
• To avoid unnecessary consumption of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), that may be scarce

In addition, there are well-known advantages of  Tele-Med:

• Faster response and more frequent consultations, contributing to a higher quality of treatment
• Reduced costs for society (although Tele-Med itself may be adding costs rather than save on costs)

However, the increased costs for the health sector itself have been for long a factor that has weighted negatively on the development and wide-scale application of Tele-Med. Furthermore, industry has not enough aimed for standardization of equipment for use in Tele-Med.

Tele-Med has been developing in areas with low population density and hence transport complications, such as distances and adverse weather conditions, e.g. Norway, Sweden, Scotland, etc.

The COVID-19 pandemic has, however, shown more generally to local authorities and ‘smart cities’ the need to develop Tele-Med solutions for daily use, and not only for epidemic / pandemic, natural and not so natural disaster situations, and transport complications.

 What is required

As a minimum, what is needed is an application

• providing extended video conferencing and imaging capabilities and
• giving access to local equipment at the side of the user /patient (hereafter User), and
• giving sufficient access and control to the health care provider (hereafter Provider)

In more detail:

• A federating application providing Communication and Remote Access to Devices (CRAD-APP),
  • With secure access to the patient health record (EHR), and
  • Controlling a secure person-to...

See discussion and full document in distributed Ledger space HERE.