Based on analysis from sources including the Department of Health & Human Services and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) has identified 10 significant benefits of telemedicine, eHealth and health IT.
According to the broad-based coalition that supports broadband access and adoption for all Americans, those benefits include:
1. Enabling more informed decision-making and enhanced quality of care.
2. Saving lives through remote consultations, whether urgent or diagnostic.
3. Creating more efficient, convenient and potentially more cost-effective delivery of care.
4. Facilitating earlier - and more accurate – diagnoses.
5. Providing greater, and faster, access to a patient’s medical history, reducing the risk of negative drug interactions or poor response to a course of treatment.
6. Improving administrative efficiency and coordination.
7. Allowing rural residents to receive expert diagnosis and treatment from distant medical centers.
8. Increasing timeliness of treatment and decreasing transfer rates while reducing medical costs through video technology.
9. Supporting real-time treatment by first responders through the use of wireless devices.
10. Enhancing senior wellness and preventive care through telemedicine and remote in-home monitoring.
“High-speed Internet puts quality health care, a life-changing benefit, in reach,” comments IIA Co-Chair Bruce Mehlman. “Particularly for Americans that do not call an urban area home, expanding high-speed mobile broadband will, for example, provide greater emergency access to 911.”
