Telemedicine and Telehealth, are two of the most widely heard words in the Healthcare Industry and have established their own space. Umpteen number of evidence and instances can be given to prove the significance of telehealth care. Nothing more than the recent devastation across the globe created by Covid-19 can prove how useful Telehealth was and continues to be. Though Telemedicine and Telehealth are used reciprocally, it would be interesting to know that they are indeed different!
Before we get into the actual differences, let us begin by understanding what each of them means.
Telehealth:
Telehealth care adopts the digital medium to focus on improving healthcare. Both patients and healthcare practitioners can benefit in a big way by using Telehealth. This is because it is now a trusted and comfortable medium to deliver health-related information to healthcare practitioners as well as medical services to patients virtually.
Some examples that define Telehealth include:
- Checking vital parameters like Blood Pressure and Diabetes through a mobile app
- Viewing of medical reports and fixing doctor consultations
- Generation of reminders for medical checkups etc.
Telemedicine:
Telemedicine service delivers a similar type of consultation experience that patients get if they meet their doctors face to face. The difference here is that the doctor corresponds with his patients virtually. Telemedicine consultation was a huge success during the pandemic as technology played a huge role in reducing the calamities otherwise which would have been even more challenging to handle.
Telemedicine for doctors has come like a big boon as they can now look forward to receiving scanned medical documents and images wherever they are, analyse them and deliver their opinion instantly.
However, despite being equally beneficial, Telehealth and Telemedicine are different from each other.
Let’s understand the differences.
Difference between Telehealth and Telemedicine:
- Telehealth covers more activities than just physician-patient consultation while telemedicine consultation is limited to physician-patient dialogue only.
- Telehealth can include non-medical activities like scheduling training programs for doctors while telemedicine services are restricted to medical services only.
- Telehealth can help patients participate in discussions with respect to chronic diseases through their tracking mechanism whereas telemedicine consultation as a technology, limits communications to physicians only.
- Telehealth as technology can be useful to a wide range of healthcare workers, pharmacists and educators while in Telemedicine, only doctors can play a major role through virtual diagnosis and advice.
While the difference between both might be marginal, it is safe to conclude that Telemedicine is a part of Telehealth.
The Final Note:
Telehealth as a whole has been an impressive and refreshing change, both for healthcare practitioners and patients alike. It continues to have a greater impact with its patient-friendly advantages. Both Telehealth and Telemedicine have their own spaces in which they will have huge roles to play in the coming years. What more can each do for you? Some of the finest experts in Telehealth and Telemedicine services at Apollo Telehealth can throw more light. Please feel free to connect with us to know more.
