What You Need To Know About Telecare Programme In Healthcare

Advancements in medical science have brought various benefits in ensuring effective patient care. Artificial intelligence, telehealth, telemedicine, and Telecare have significant potential to revolutionize medicine. 

Telecare and telehealth's purpose involves using technology to provide efficient and better healthcare facilities at home. I wanted to talk about telecare in healthcare as the topic intrigues me to explore itself.

This is mainly for older people with long-term disorders. It helps reduce the requirement to attend a clinic or expensive care at their residence. Telecare and telehealth, however, have significant differences, and both must not be confused on conceptual grounds.

Telehealth involves a broader term used to address the system, where clinical and non-clinical practices are used to ensure patient care. While on the contrary, Telecare is specific to the needs of the individual patient and ensures the quality of care for an individual patient from a distance. 

Another interesting definition of Telecare is stated by Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE). 

It is "equipment provided to support an individual in their home and tailored to meet their needs. It can be as simple as the basic community alarm service, able to respond in an emergency and provide regular contact by telephone." 

Scientific and technological advancements have also revolutionized the clinical and organizational structure adopted to ensure patient care. NHS was also founded with the key objective of introducing innovation and technological advances in healthcare and patient care. 

The organization has evolved with technological advancements, significantly improving patient care by improving the quality and duration of life. 

The most recent advancements introduced in NHS involve telehealth and Telecare, where Telecare involves using information and communication technology to provide effective patient care services at a distance. 

These innovations have been introduced to ensure services for the geriatric (ageing) population within an affordable budget. A local Rustin NHS trust formulated a TAT team to achieve the telecare objectives by collaborating with the technology company Cloud Care. 

The outcome analyzed after the telecare programme was not as high as expected. The following post discusses the risks associated with the role of the telecare programme.

The risk associated with the role of the telecare programme

The need for a new healthcare model evolved from increased service requirements at a low cost. Advancement in telehealth has led to Telecare which primarily aims at providing healthcare by reducing cost and increasing efficiency from a distance. 

In the modern-day, keeping people away from healthcare facilities and remotely ensuring patient care is becoming essential to reduce the load on the hospitals or healthcare facilities and helping the old patients with long-term diseases to get quality patient care remotely without any hassle to travel now and then for a regular checkup.

By now, despite the obvious benefits of the telecare programme, the outcomes have not been found as promising as expected. Every technological advancement comes with a few underlying risks, and here we have analyzed them in detail. 

The risks associated with the role of the telecare programme, as well as concerning the innovation device, include;

Organizational learning and environment

To ensure the required outcome of the telecare programme, organizational learning has been deemed an integral part of the telecare programme. Technological advancements in patient care require the deployment of trained staff skilled in using novel medicare devices and equipment.

An individual patient's needs can not be addressed and rectified without proper monitoring by a trained tech team and healthcare professionals. For the reasons mentioned above, there is a constant need to design and re-design the patient care model to meet individual patient needs.

To update the knowledge regarding the new healthcare models redefining the existing roles of healthcare staff is also important, besides the emergence of new professional profiles, which on a larger scale gives rise to conflict about the professional identity and instils a sense of insecurity to take over such technical tasks in a healthcare setting.

The lack of alignment between different contributors of Telecare, i.e. doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and the tech team. The ever-changing technological environment with the speed of technological advancement is another risk factor to interrupt the outcome of telecare services. 

With every advancement introduced in the health system, the consistency of individual patient care will be affected.

Technological Environment

The lack of technological skills, poor coverage in the technological territory, infrastructure, confidentiality, and data security are risk factors in ensuring desired patient care outcomes.

Human Factor

The human factor here can be defined as 'resistant to change. The human factor involves both the patient compliance with the telecare programme as well as the health care providers who are still skeptical about whether it will work or not. The risks associated with surety, clarity, and confidence are apparent and can not be ignored. 

Economic Environment

There are implementation costs associated with the telecare programme. The initial funding and the unexpected cost to sustain the project are important to be considered for achieving the desired outcomes. If not calculated wisely, the telecare programme that aims at reducing cost might be a financial burden.

Hope this was informative for those interested to learn more about AI in Healthcare. I'll share the telecare programme's value proposition risks in the next post. 

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This is Kinza Asghar Khan ; a Pharmacist turned writer. I do Freelance Medical Writing and Pharma Copywriting as a matter of passion. If you want to learn about types of Medical Writing, you can check my blog post here. If you are looking for any relevant content, please feel free to avail yourself of my services.

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