by Mahdi Abdullah Murad
When I was level 4, my writing instructor brought us an article that talked about telemedicine. I couldn’t quite understand what did telemedicine mean, so I directly went to www.dictionary.Com and found this definition, “the diagnosis and treatment of patients in remote areas using Medical information, as x-rays or television pictures, transmitted over long distances, esp. by satellite.” I was shocked and was really excited about the program. Therefore, I googled the word, “telemedicine” and read many articles about it.
I didn’t give up till I quite understood about what telemedicine is. In one of the articles, I found some very interesting words, “Telemedicine is the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications to improve patients' health status.” When I read the word, “electronic communication”, I stopped reading for awhile and thought. I was wondered to understand more, so I start reading the article again. While I was trying to figure out the meaning of ‘electronic communication’, I was shocked by another word on the article, “telehelth”, which was the word the author used to encompass a broader definition of remote healthcare that doesn’t always involve clinical services. By reading that article, I found out that telemedicine has several parts, such as videoconferencing, transmission of images, continuing medical education and nursing call centers. Moreover, the author of the article that I had read clarified that the telemedicine was not a separate medical specialty, and products and services related to telemedicine are part of a larger investment by health care institutions in either information technology or the delivery of clinical care.
The well-written article that I read about telemedicine made me to search more about this technology, so I tried to understand the advantages of the telemedicine. What I could achieve in finding the advantages of that cutting-edge technology was several benefits.
One of the advantages behind using telemedicine is that patients will be seeing and looking after by specialists over a live. The specialists can collect a lot of data by using telemedicine. For instance, specialists can stay with their patients for a log time via talking with them for a long time. Specialists can stay with patients for a long time by using videoconferencing for example. Thus, they will know more about the patient’s problems and view those problems later.
Another advantage is that it is the easiest way to treat sick people because it doesn’t require difficulties, such as going to the hospital, wait for a long in the line till patients can see doctors, etc. experience teaches us how much we would like to just stay in bed and go no where even hospital when we are sick. Imagine how nice would be if you had a chance to be treated at your home without going to anywhere. Many people just don’t like to go to hospital when they get sick, and they get worse rather than better when they go to hospitals. My mom is one of these kinds of people who just can’t stand going to hospital. She just hate to go to hospital and stay in line to get chance to see a doctor. Any time she went to hospital, she got worse than better because she is old and can’t even walk well. So, how nice would be if she had a chance to lay down in her bed and have some one recovers her.
Finally, the ways of communication between patients and doctors is another advantage that telemedicine provides. Telemedicine facilitates ways for both patients and doctors to have contact very quickly and easily. For example, when the doctor and patient are widely separated, they can contact with each other using visual communication by using computer or satellite. Moreover, sometimes it might be difficult to have a treatment for some kinds of diseases in some countries or areas, telemedicine can be the only or the best way to be used.
In my opinion, Iraq is the best candidate to establish such a program like that. Iraq is a country that is under the rebuilding after the most devastated war ever, and it needs to be reconstructed in different fields. The recent war that Iraqis are experiencing is a conflict that caused a lot of different and dangerous diseases. There are a lot of different kinds of sickness that can not be treated in Iraq, but they can be recovered in other developed countries. So, how great would be if Iraq had such program like that and patients benefited from? If we had such a program like that in Iraq, we could contact with doctors and specialists around the world to recover our sickness without going to those countries and spending a lot of money. Iraq need healthcare more than anything else. Therefore, any programs that support this area will be very welcomed by the Iraqis. We are looking forward to hearing from so many developed countries, companies, and organizations to help us rebuild our country and develop healthcare within Iraq.
Although there will be some obstacles in setting up such a program like telemedicine here in Iraq because of the lack of technological developments and small number of technological users. Only 1% of Iraqis are using internet today. This program requires collaboration among the people to be developed. Since the percentage of the internet or computer users is such law, it will be hard to set such program like that in Iraq. We are just behind in using technology for now. It will be a long-term process till Iraqis get adapted with this program. So, once the number of the Technology users increased, it will be easy to have such a program like that here.
References:
http://www.americantelemed.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3333
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