HEALTHCARE 4.0
TELEHEALTH HAS ACTUALLY been around for a long time . The very first report of telemedicine in a scientific journal was in 1879 in The Lancet . It was a report of a telephone diagnosis , where the doctor held the receiver of the phone to the patient ’ s chest and made a diagnosis from that . Then you have the flying doctor service , which has been around in Australia for 90 years . Why , then , does it not feel like the medical industry has fully embraced the technological shift we ’ ve seen over the past quarter of a century to its full potential ?
To try and find out , Healthcare Global spoke to James Barlow , Professor of Technology and Innovation Management ( Healthcare ) at Imperial College Business School , and author of ‘ Managing Innovation in Healthcare ’. By his own admission , he has spent the last 15 to 20 years trying to work out why the adoption of ideas is so slow within healthcare , but even he says there ’ s no one quick answer to that question . “ A lot of work I ’ ve done has been around remote care to telehealth , to telecare , telemedicine , because it ’ s a very interesting example of a technological innovation , which , at least on paper ,
offers huge prospects to improve the quality of care ,” Barlow says , “ and to shift care from expensive settings like hospitals out to the community .
“ There have been a huge number of trials and there is an evidence base , yet all countries are finding it immensely difficult to get it adopted as part of a mainstream healthcare system . “ I think we need to make a distinction between telehealth
22 April 2018