Tele-medicine

Channelnewsasia.com: "Up to 75 percent of them got well from their respective hometowns.

And doctors say it works both ways, by helping to reduce the stress on hospital infrastructure in the metros."

Oddly enough, this was one of the dinner time conversations tonight and I am glad to see it is actually a reality in India and becoming so successful. Our conversations revolved around a number of issue we have with health. We cannot get enough doctors into all the areas in Austrlai. There has been talk of using Super Nurses to help ease the strain in some of these areas. One sister in law had had a gap charge of 8 000 dollars for some radical surgery she had had for cancer. She had prided herself on being very cluey about medical treatments and management of things medical and her cancer had presented that kind of challenge. In the state she was in at the time, she had not asked about the gap. She could afford to pay it. Most people couldn't. So having discussed our experiences and ideas, we wer looking for solutions. We talked of the merit of super nurses. We thought doctors and specialists needed to be more challenged by being able to treat cases which encouraged them to use the high level skills they had learned. So then we talked about a "filtering" process, which is where the super nurses or equivalent came in. The idea of computer doctors and computer access to medical help was mentioned because we do have the technology. We use it in outlying areas when specialists cannot quickly get there. We are getting to the stage where we are shifting into the digital drift for the way we do things. It's good to have access to doctors and there are times when you need a specialist, but you don't always want to be burning up time when you know others need the professional help and we are short staffed. An emergency is an emergency, but sometimes, you just need to ask advice and list your symptoms to see whether you actually need immediate attention. It would be important in terms of major outbreaks of colds and flus and in the treatment of ongoing conditions like arthritis, diabetes, psoriasis etc.I am sure it would also ease the burden on the mental health services if people had access to an online professional. I think tele doctoring is a great idea!