Telemedicine is Here and It's Taking Care of Patients with Parkinson's Disease

In this day and age, technology has had a tremendous impact in most industries, especially healthcare. From simulations to robotic assisted surgeries, technology is taking medicine to a whole new level.

Telemedicine is making it’s way into the physician to patient relationship. Many physicians are now diagnosing and treating their patients through telecommunications technology. Using this sort of virtual communication will let patients either record themselves and have physicians view them later or have real time consultations.

Who Uses Telemedicine?

Virtual consulting and communication between patients and physicians is used most frequently by neurologists with patients who suffer from Parkinson’s disease. Trials and research has been conducted to analyze the effectiveness of telemedicine to patients with chronic neurological diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease.

Virtual appointments has its fair share of advantages that were found in the preliminary studies which includes:

In the study, researchers found that patients living in rural areas were willing to switch from in-person visits to telemedicine consulting because of the money saved and quicker access to physicians. According to the surveys, it was concluded that reliability and accuracy and quality of life seemed to increase.

Nonetheless, this sort of medical technology also has some drawbacks that may question its benefits. Through trials and surveys researchers have found that although reliability ranked highly, quality of care was still unclear. Telemedicine can have faulty visual quality and technical issues that can result in improper diagnosis or evaluation. Like all technology, there is still much room for improvement in telemedicine.

Telemedicine is used globally and could certainly benefits rural areas in the US as well as international areas that lack access to medical care. However, without access to proper internet, telemedicine will be impossible in certain countries and extremely remote areas. Although the numbers are low compared to on-site visits even in the US, virtual consultations us something that will be seen more frequently in the area of healthcare.