Alt3: Insight through understanding. Creating sustainable advantage. Leading edge development.
Dynamic strategic development in a time of great change
minimising future risk
creating sustainable advantage
creating opportunity
PREVIOUS MONTHS: May 2009
LEADING EDGE HEALTH CARE: 25th May, 2009
Let's be honest - where ever you are in the world health care is under severe stress.
If you have to pay for your health care it is expensive. If you are in receipt of "free" health care - it will often feel as if it is just so much effort (and waiting), and too much like being a second class citizen amid people who too often see you as part of a production line.
Why is this?
I mean, health and health care has been instituted throughout the world based on such high ideals. And yet here we are today in a world where health care is denied to so many and available to the remainder too much like a privilege that seems to be perpetually under threat. Just where have the high ideals disappeared to?
We have to be honest. Global, regional, national, personal health care is in an undesirable state because health care is largely under such a level of bureaucratic management that it significantly drains resources, depletes innovation and destroys those high ideals that are the foundations of sustainable health care. But there is a wind of change. And this wind of change is building, blowing, starting to gust across the global landscape - and it is changing the way health care management perceives the delivery of health care.
Health care is becoming more electronic. It is becoming more joined up, thereby negating that draining duplication and constant re-inventing the wheel, minimising the significant level of risk, providing enhanced care at the point of delivery. And all at reduced cost. Those who revel in the continuance of "business as usual", those who desperately attempt stagnation, they all rebel against the wind of change that takes power out of their hands and creates a revolution in health care ... but should know the wind of change is about to sweep them all away regardless of their attempts to hold back the inevitable.
Areas such as "out of hospital" care and electronic health care records are important developments, important pieces of the overall fragmented jigsaw. Another important piece in this overall jigsaw is telemedicine. Telemedicine, with technology the core delivery enabler, draws many pieces of the jigsaw together to significantly reduce costs, and to massively increase the efficiency and effectiveness of delivery to where it matters most - straight to the patient. This is the scenario where through telemedicine the citizen (the patient) has greater control over their own lives, greater responsibility for their own health and well being. Through telemedicine the individual can be as pro-active as they choose to be, and can alter their lifestyle as much as they want, through the on-going monitoring of their conditions / health, the electronic nature of the uploaded information so they can see over time how well they are doing - they themselves.
This is leading edge health care.
But ... why is it taking so long to become established? The technology is with us. True, the impact of the technology will increase over time, yet what we have today is good enough to make a huge difference ... so why is telemedicine taking so long to be established as mainstream common working practice?
Can it be that the old guard whose only function is to preserve stagnation is working hard to minimise progression? Governments, not renowned for their foresight, should be at the forefront of development if they are serious about the health of their people, and especially in this day and age of noticeably finite resources and restricted budgets. So just where is the much needed leadership?
Telemedicine is at the real leading edge of health care development. Piece by piece, by the efforts of a few, it is being drawn in to mainstream health care. It is inevitable ... but just taking so long, so much effort and in all honesty too many pilot projects re-inventing the wheel to discover the same type of data over and over again.
Now has come the time to go beyond yet another round of pilots. Now is the time for some far sighed government to place telemedicine firmly at the forefront of its health care agenda. It's going to happen anyway. Someone has to take the first step. Be brave. Be noticed. Be first.
Regards
JS
Insight through understanding. Advice you can trust.
If you don't understand the risks, how can you prepare? Can you afford to let the issues be blurred?
The turbulent 21st century
life isn't black and white