Telemedicine: An Essential Technology for Reformed Healthcare
Author: Freddy Lykke, Martin Holzworth, Marianne Rosager, Jared Rhoads, Fran Turisco
Healthcare reform is generating new approaches to care delivery that aligns care practices with incentives for patients, providers, and payers/governments. Telemedicine is a key enabler of care reform goals and has been successfully piloted in numerous care delivery settings. Although traditional barriers are coming down, organizations need to take into account existing challenges when developing their telemedicine program; focusing on immediate needs and leveraging current technologies and funding opportunities.
Healthcare reform in dozens of countries, including France, the United Kingdom, Australia, Chile, Canada, Taiwan, China and the United States, is generating dramatically new approaches to care delivery. Although the details and the level of maturity of the efforts differ across countries, the overall trends are universal: they reflect the need to contain costs while improving access and care quality, to overcome a shortage of providers, and to take care of a growing sicker and aging population. They are all built on a foundation that puts the citizens at the center and focuses on keeping them healthy, partly by encouraging them to become more active participants in their own health management.
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