Craic On

At Home

Just think if you could contact your doctor, whenever you like, with health concerns via mediums like FaceBook.

That’s the future according to the British Medical Journal.

It could save such a lot of money.

You could contact your doctor first of all via Facebook and he or she could then give you some advice.  If that isn’t enough you could then switch to skype to have a personal chat.

If that wasn’t enough then you could make an appointment to come in to the surgery.

Money Saved

As you can see, a lot of the visits to the surgery would already be weeded out at the Facebook and Skype level.

Just imagine the savings to the Health Service.

They’re calling it Telehealth, i.e bringing the care into a patient’s home.

His would be a great boon for the elderly – if they could be persuaded to turn on their computers.

You would have your doctor signed in to a network of his or her patients as you would with Facebook.

Holland

It seems that there is already one set up for Parkinson’s sufferers in the Netherlands called ParkinsonsNet, a website dedicated to Parkinsons Sufferers.

It links people to specialist doctors and nurses who have expert knowledge on Parkinsons. It is a Facebook for Parkinsons sufferers.

Patients can find out all sort of information about Parkinsons and ask questions of the specialists and can request a one-to-one via a video link.

The website links 3,000 professionals from 15 different disciplines to a network of patients.

Genuine Experts

It means, also, that the patients can be linked to genuine experts rather than to generalists, as it is now, who then refer you on to a specialist with a resulting wait of months and a visit to Letterkenny or further afield.

That would all changed.

The cost benefits would be staggering to the health service which is already buckling under the costs.

The more that can be done at a patient’s home the better – and the cheaper too.

For people here it could save many trips to Letterkenny.

Savings

The Dutch system is estimated to have saved €20m and that’s just from the one small scheme and just for one illness.

It seems that they are planning the equivalent of a ParkinsonsNet in the UK. It will spread to other illnesses too.

In Scotland they have big plans to transform the Health Service using patient-centred home care.

How many of your visits to the doctor’s surgery could have been done just as easily at home?

Even prescriptions could be sent automatically to the chemist from the doctor’s PC, so that it is waiting for you when you go in.

According to a spokesman for the Medical Journal ”We will use it but only where it is safe, effective and, most importantly, appropriate to do so…but people use technology to run their day-to-day life – and they now expect to be able to use their tablet, smartphone or computer as a way to access their health and care services.“

The amount of money that could be saved by the Health Service is staggering and this could be used on new equipment.

The amount of your precious time that it saves will be huge as well with most of your treatment coming in your own home.

That’s the future!

What do you think?