The Future of Telehealth and the Challenges on the Horizon

Limited Regulation & Credibility:

The demand for digital health services is outpacing the oversight and regulation necessary to ensure that all of these apps are effective and safe. While a meditation or mindfulness app isn’t likely to cause any harm, mental health apps that claim to treat depression or disease management apps like those designed to track blood sugar for diabetes could put patients at risk. If anyone can release a healthcare app and make baseless claims about efficacy, then there is the potential for medical negligence or even intentional harm. Who is to say that the blood sugar readings need to be accurate or that treatment plans within these apps must be based on the latest science? Without some form of 3rd party testing or regulation, it’s up to the patient to weed through all of the options. Consulting with a trusted doctor may help, but no one can expect every doctor to have personally vetted all of these different services. The FDA is launching a pre-certification program to help add credibility to the apps that opt-in, but this may not be a comprehensive solution. 

Data and Document Security:

The safeguarding of protected health information (PHI) is an essential part of health services. Video conferencing, patient portals, healthcare apps, and more all have the potential to compromise private healthcare data. Ensuring that your data and documents are safe and that your procedures are in line with HIPAA standards is paramount. This can be especially difficult as information is being passed from system to system. An additional but important consideration is how your electronic health records (EHR) integrate with your telemedicine platform. Ensuring that the back-end processes, workflows, and integrations are secure adds another layer of complexity to delivering telehealth services. Having secure, centralized access within your own medical network is important and can be achieved with the right records management software and cloud tools.

The Future is Now:

Although it is not in widespread use yet, artificial intelligence may be the next evolution of telehealth. As medical researchers continue to compile massive data sets and diagnostic images, it may soon be possible to get real-time medical results using machine learning. Using big data, a properly trained narrow AI could be used to compare a patient’s medical imaging to millions of comparable records and pinpoint a diagnosis. 

One day getting a diagnosis for that suspicious mole may be as simple as snapping a picture on your phone and uploading it for analysis. Indeed, a study in 2019 testing an artificial intelligence neural network called DERM (Deep Ensemble for Recognition of Melanoma) had diagnostic accuracy comparable to board-certified dermatologists using the same image set. (3) Big data may also be used to help in treatment plans by comparing data on the outcomes of specific medications or therapies over time.