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Telemedicine is gaining in popularity, and often helps patients avoid pricey doctor visits when they're not necessary. In this video, HealthMaker Aenor Sawyer, MD, explains how to know when an in-person visit is warranted.
Hopefully we can demonstrate more and more and that's where the monitoring of this implementation is really important, but I think that we will be able to demonstrate that our rich could be broader. If we could discern, which patients do we need to see in person, and which patients can we actually facilitate, an appropriate intervention by treating them remotely.
I've done some work in Tele-medicine, and I've been building a virtual tumor board or multi-disciplinary management tool that's in a secure online space so that we can give better care to more people for less money. And I think what we have to sort out now is where do we need to see someone in person and where can we access enough information from them remotely whether it's through video or whether it's through asynchronous online email or whatever.
It's a matter of trying to sort out and it's going to take a while for us to understand exactly what the algorithm is for when I need to see you in person and when I really need to get information that I can't discern just on the phone or in text but I might pick up something in the way you're expressing it or for us in orthopedics the way you move.
I learn a lot up by just watching the patient walk in the room and get up on the treatment table and get off of it. So the in-person peace is critical and will always have a place, but I think there we are going to find out and that's a really expensive piece of health care. But I think what we are going to find out is that there a lot of inventions and levels of acuity that we can address in an asynchronous or not in-person model.
Whether it's synchronously by video or whether it's completely asynchronously by some other form of communication.
Aenor Sawyer, MD, MS, is an orthopedic surgeon and assistant clinical professor at UCSF. Her work focuses on bone health from pediatrics to geriatrics, device innovation and digital health technology.
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