But, why is home telehealth needed? To answer that question, its helpful to examine a typical day in the life of a home telehealth patient. Meet Mary Smith, a composite case drawn from many examples. Mary is a 63-year-old resident of Gatesville, Kansas, has lived with diabetes for 15 years and has had many complications during that time. Travel to hospitals and specialists has been difficult and the visits expensive. On her last discharge from hospital to home, her doctor approved home telehealth services and monitoring.

Its 6:30 AM in Marys rural farmhouse where she has lived most of her life. Mary is awakened by her alarm going off reminding her to measure her blood glucose and blood pressure and to send those readings through her telephone to her telenurse, Susan Brown, who works 200 miles away in Wichita. Susan will receive the information and contact Mary if there is a change of health status or if help appears to be needed.

Mary sends her first report at 8:00 AM but she doesnt do it with a regular phone call. She does it by using two telemonitoring devices–a blood pressure cuff with a telecommunications plug-in and a similar device to monitor blood glucose–that are attached to a telehealth, computer workstation. The telehealth work station is connected to Marys phone line and is linked through the line to Susans computer in Wichita.

After Marys computer sends its data, Susan receives the information on her own computer and can instantly interpret the state of Marys health. In addition, an inexpensive camera perched on top of Marys telemonitor can take snapshots of Mary as she measures her insulin, inserts her syringe, and rotates injection sites, and will send the pictures along to her nurse so that Susan can actually see Mary and how she is doing. If she needs to, the nurse can give her patient a phone call and coach her along. Using her telemonitoring machine and a telephone, Mary can be connected with a nurse, ask a question, or be reminded of a routine on a 24/7/365 basis.

via The Home Telehealth Primer.

via Telehealth – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.