Healthcare Economy

Integration – The effectiveness of wireless applications and technologies depend significantly on how well they are integrated into the overall eco-system. Integration points extend across all functions – access, transmission & delivery of information. An effective telehealth implementation need to have in place a well defined end-to-end architecture that identifies all integration points and use the most appropriate solution for the same. Currently solutions to these integration challenges do exist – but more as individual silos (e.g. Mobile VPNs, Secure data transmission over mobile solve the access challenges, however, these are typically point infrastructural solutions not necessarily integrated to deliver a continuous support across the different information lifecycle  for all telehealth stakeholders. E.g. while doctors may have a secure access via Mobile VPNs, providing similar access to patients/relatives would require a different nature of integration). The other big integration challenge is one of aggregation of device data and exchanging the same to back-end health information systems – which at its best is still a work-in-progress.

Regulation – Regulatory requirements is one aspect in healthcare that cannot be ignored and can often pose a significant overhead related to technology investments required to achieve an effective telehealth implementations. There are 2 facets to this – one is the actual regulatory requirements around managing patient information, requirements on how remote interactions can/cannot be managed, requirements around privacy driving how securely information need to be transmitted as well as controlling who can access what information. The other is the varying nature of these requirements across locales (e.g. differences in such requirements across the US & Europe). With the increased rate of globalization (e.g. telehealth as a service can be delivered not just within US but across the Atlantic as well), it is important that solution providers and care providers look at both these facets of regulations to effectively deliver their telehealth implementation.

In summary, while wireless technologies and mobile applications do promise to be a key enabler of telehealth, it is important to take a broader perspective and evaluate the capabilities across the 4 critical facets of Interaction, Integration, Interoperability and Regulations. For an effective implementation we need to optimally bring together the advances in wireless technologies.