Telemedicine visits with your doctor during a pandemic

During this age of hand sanitizer, quarantines and national lockdowns, how will the current health system handle the needs of those living with chronic illness. In order to quell my own curiosity, I developed a survey on telemedicine. Since knowledge and understanding is an early barrier in healthcare it was important to have a sense of how well the general public understood the term “telemedicine”.

So, we ran a quick poll on Facebook and found that more than 60% of respondents did not know the terms “telehealth” or “telemedicine”. This quick poll was viewed by more than 1000 people, and more than 75 people actively participated in the poll.

What is telemedicine?

According to the Health Resources Services Administration, telemedicine refers to remote clinical services offered by a healthcare provider. This can be done using technology such as videoconferencing.

How can telemedicine help during a pandemic?

As noted in an article featured on mHealthIntelligence, “COVID-19 is different because we do not know all the factors surrounding transmission and its effects on patients,” Jason Hallock, Chief Medical Officer for SOC Telemed, points out. “Because coronavirus is new and there have been a significant number of deaths, the uncertainty surrounding that is scaring both patients and the general public. Our healthcare workers do not have all the answers yet. Telehealth providers are challenged to make recommendations when there are still many unknowns. Telemedicine can be useful to evaluate and reassure patients in alternative settings, and also can be used to help patients decide who needs to be seen in the hospital or an alternative setting like an urgent care.”

Hallock says telehealth can help by enabling healthcare providers to treat isolated patients, thus preventing the spread of what has so far been an extremely contagious virus.

Telemedicine in Neurology

If your neurologist has not yet suggested a visit using telemedicine, you can bet the opportunity will come up soon enough. Please take a minute to complete our survey on telemedicine in neurology below:

Jessica K. Smith Founder and CEO; Executive Director

Jessica Keenan Smith is a patient advocate and epilepsy community leader with more than 15 years of experience. As Founder and CEO of Living Well With Epilepsy and Executive Director of ASENT she bridges the gap between the scientific and patient communities, with a particular focus on the needs of the epilepsies. Jessica Keenan Smith is Founder and CEO of Living Well With Epilepsy, an award winning online resource for people affected by epilepsy to share stories and access in-depth information on the disease. Since 2009, Living Well With Epilepsy (https://livingwellwithepilepsy.com) has been featured in Forbes, Wired, NBC, NPR and the cover story of Epilepsy Advocate Magazine and has partnered with companies such as UCB, Lundbeck, Sunovion, Eisai, and more. Ms. Smith is also the Executive Director of the American Society for Experimental Neurotherapeutics (ASENT) (https://asent.org), an organization that brings together leaders from industry, academia, government and advocacy who are engaged in bringing drugs and devices to market across all neurologic disease states. In this role she is responsible for leading a successful scientific journal and annual scientific conference with speakers from all over the world.

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