Telemedicine and Digitalhealth

Future of Telemedicine

There’s a lot to be optimistic about in the future of telemedicine. With rapid advances in technology, it’s likely that telemedicine will only become easier and more widely accepted in the coming years. Already, smart glasses (like Google Glass) and smart watches (like the Apple Watch) can monitor patients’ health data and transmit them in real time to health professionals. Programs like clmtrackr can analyze a person’s emotional state based on their facial expressions and could be used to monitor mental wellness. Digital health start-ups like Augmedix, are experimenting with automatically transcribing documentation during a patient visit. Advances in robotic surgeries allow surgeons to operate on patients from afar. To keep up with the rate that technology is progressing, the telemedicine will of course need to overcome other administrative barriers, such as restrictions placed on telemedicine practice by state legislation, state-specific licensing requirements by medical boards, and the reimbursement policies that affect whether doctors are reimbursed by payers and patients are not out-of-pocket.