Telehealth in intensive care: advances in new technologies

Abstract

The authors present data about the features of the up-to-date information technologies being put in the health care practice and highlight that the telecommunications in the health care institutions will require introducing new equipment and facilities and many structural changes relative to the institutional and procedural framework and the interpersonal relationships (between patients, between a doctor and a patient, and between doctors of various specialisations). As reported, these conditions will make a medical specialist update the views and knowledge in such a way that there will be no problems in the established traditional attitude ‘patient-doctor’ based upon the patient’s belief in doctor’s experience and skills, on the one hand, and in the shortest period will allow to improve the diagnostic procedures and the choice of treatment method. Otherwise, this will provoke the loss of a definition ‘attending medical doctor’ and formation of the uncontrollable process of self-treatment and drug circulation that, finally, will result in the reduction of the common public health and the unjustified resource depletion in the public health care.