How health IT enables safer medical travel and tourism

IT innovation, global medicine and frustrated medical patients drive the demand for medical travel. But telemedicine also improves patient care and the customer experience of medical travelers. Once again, we welcome medical IT entrepreneur, Agha Ahmed, Managing Partner of GHIMBA, as we explore how IT innovations help patients get high-quality healthcare outside of the USA.
How do IT innovations help provide services that medical travelers can benefit from?
IT helps deliver safe medical care and a pleasant trip to facilities overseas. For more than 20 years, IT innovations have improved patient care worldwide. Now, these innovations are helping medical travelers, too.
How so?
In telemedicine and m-health, telecommunications, mobile devices and information technologies provide clinical health care at a distance. (M-health is the practice of using mobile technology in healthcare.) There are three important devices and software capabilities that help deliver the promise of medical travel:

First, there are electronic media records. With an EMR system, it’s easy to gather patient clinical notes, diagnostic scans, medical administrator records, and discharge summaries in digital form. By automating and streamlining clinical workflow, IT cuts the time and effort needed to maintain information and create the data trail needed for medical audits and QA procedures.
Then, there are smartphones. Our familiar hand-held computers are becoming an important enabler in the cloud-based heal...

Source: The Healthcare IT Guy - June 7, 2015 Category: Information Technology Authors: Shahid N. Shah Tags: Innovation Uncategorized Medical tourism Telehealth Videotelephony Source Type: blogs