Question

• Analyze the impact of the telemedicine in healthcare..  
• What impact do they have?
• Analyze security risks and privacy safeguards related to telemedicine in healthcare..
• What are the privacy risks and security safeguards of telemedicine?
• Examine strategies to evaluate system effectiveness.

Answer 1

Answer- Telemedicine is also referred to as e-health. It allows health care professionals to evaluate, diagnose, and treat patients in remote locations using telecommunications technology. Telemedicine allows patients in remote locations to access medical expertise quickly, efficiently, and without travel. The telecommunication technology has been evolved immensely in the last decade and gradually it becomes an integral part of the health care system.

Impact of telecommunication in health care

1.Telemedicine can provide high-quality health care services to patients living in rural areas and those with transportation or mobility difficulties. At the same time, telemedicine enables health care practices to cater to a much broader set of patients than those living locally.

2. Electronic data storage facility and monitoring services reduce the health care cost of patients and insurance companies.

3. Gradually it can provide a alternative way to prevent acute and chronic diseases.

4.It can solve the problem of patient of day off from work during check up and reduces the time in the waiting room that can manage the time of the patient beautifully.

The privacy risks and security safeguards of telemedicine is mentioned below

Privacy risks of telehealth involve a lack of controls or limits on the collection, use, and disclosure of sensitive personal information but such collection, use, and disclosure of information may be beyond what patients reasonably expect given anticipated using this technology.

Types of equipment or sensors that are installed in patients home inadvertently collect sensitive information about households

Relevant security threats include breach of confidentiality during the collection of sensitive data or during transmission to the provider’s system; unauthorized access to the functionality of supporting devices as well as to data stored on them; or it can due to untrusted distribution of software and hardware to the patient.

Strategies to evaluate system effectiveness are mentioned below

Various types of privacy and security control that help to effective the channel of the telemedicine system. Telehealth programs implement their activities, continuous program monitoring is important to help identify potential points of improvement. Regular evaluation of the program allows the implementation team to identify areas of high and low performance and therefore make changes as needed.

1. Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPs) operating laws are necessary to implement to protect privacy.

2. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is one of the federal laws that are helping to implement these principles. There is no guaranteed right for individuals to request copies of information collected by the devices.

3. Data encryption is where data are electronically locked by complex mathematics and encryption keys and it can only ensure that if an attacker gains access to the raw data, those data will be meaningless.