Category: Telehealth

Telemedicine refers to the use of video conferencing, phone calls, and texts to provide medical care remotely. It’s estimated that 80% of medical facilities now use some kind of telemedicine technology. At Uniti Health, the new focus is pushing telemedicine in K-12 schools.

In schools, telemedicine can be used to connect students and school staff with healthcare professionals for a variety of purposes, including diagnoses and treatment. Looking to the future of medicine, the increased accessibility of behavioral health, wellness, and concussion treatments is a game-changer.

How Will Telemedicine Work in Schools?

How schools will receive virtual care and what type of care they will receive depends on a school’s budget, current infrastructure, and core needs. Uniti Health works with schools to assess all these factors and give the best recommendations on telemedicine programs. Here are just a few ways that telemedicine may be used:

Virtual Visits

Students and school staff can use telemedicine to connect with healthcare providers for virtual visits. This can be especially useful for individuals who may not have access to healthcare facilities or those who prefer to receive care from the comfort of their own homes and school.

Having this access also gives parents the ability to approve their children’s care needs without leaving work. Students can receive quick answers and recommendations for minor issues or visit teleorthopedics if they get injured in practice. Telemedicine will become the new normal as more schools adopt programs into their systems.

Behavioral Health

Behavioral health care, including treatment for mental health, can be provided through virtual visits. Teletherapy or telebehavioral health can involve therapy sessions, psych evaluations, and medication monitoring. This gives a huge advantage to students who couldn’t readily receive behavioral health care otherwise.

Diagnoses

Some health concerns can be easily diagnosed just by telling a physician what your symptoms are. Getting health professionals to review student/staff symptoms and perform virtual exams reduces the time people have to wait to receive treatment and speeds up recovery time.

Although telemedicine is very accurate and reliable, it is noted for more serious health conditions like allergic reactions and shortness of breath, the patient should be taken to see urgent or emergency services as soon as possible.

Treatment

Depending on the condition being treated, telemedicine can provide ongoing treatment and follow-up care to students and school staff. This can include things like medication management, therapy sessions, diabetes management, and other forms of monitored care.

Students won’t need to take many trips from school to the doctor to home, instead, they can get diagnosed and prescribed treatment in one place before heading back to the comfort of their homes.

Telemedicine Cart Selection

Implementing telemedicine into schools means also looking into how to source these virtual visits efficiently around the school. DATACART™ is here to help with the best telehealth and telemedicine carts in the industry. When it comes to selecting the right telemedicine cart, there are some important factors to consider.

Key Factors for Cart Selection

You don’t need to be a licensed health professional to operate a medical cart. If you can operate a laptop or tablet, you can operate one of our medical carts. That is why we want to highlight some of the best key factors of our carts and give recommendations depending on what you’re looking for.

For in-school use, we recommend DATACART™ Small Form Factor (SFF) carts and smaller telemedicine carts. Here’s why:

Mobility

Schools and hospitals are similar because they host a lot of individuals all at once, usually in multiple different rooms across many floors. Being able to bring a cart around to different classrooms or pass them along easily from child to child is a huge advantage to have because there wouldn’t necessarily need to be a designated room for your telemedicine cart.

Compact Size and Small Footprint

With all the supplies and storage issues at schools, the small footprint and compact size of each medical cart make it hassle-free. SFF carts especially won’t take up a lot of space but all recommended carts are extremely easy to store.

Lightweight

The lightweight design of our carts makes it easy for teachers, nurses, and students alike to move or operate. Even with the added screens, tablets, or monitors, it is easily maneuverable for older children and adults.

Carts to Consider

Depending on what factors you are looking for, there are different carts and accessories to accommodate your needs. As mentioned before, each school’s budget and current infrastructure will be assessed, recommended, and trained on the corresponding telemedicine carts.

For smaller, tablet-focused carts we recommend:

• Tablet roll stand
• SFF cart with tablet mount

For bigger, more equipment-based carts we recommend:

• Wellness cart
• Telestroke cart

Additionally, if your school is looking for something more compact and discrete to work alongside the in-school nurses and counselors we recommend checking out our telehealth kits.

You can find a comprehensive list of telehealth/telemedicine carts here and more SFF carts here.

Takeaways

Overall, telehealth is becoming more integrated into K-12 schools than ever before. The benefits of easy and quick access are beneficial to everyone involved. Telemedicine will continue to be an essential part to ensure students and teachers alike receive proper healthcare needs, especially since schools are implementing more technology into their curriculum.

Contact DATACART™ for more information on our telehealth/telemedicine carts and accessories.

Experiencing a stroke, whether yourself or others, can be terrifying, stressful, and traumatizing. A stroke, explained by Mayo Clinic, occurs “when the blood supply to part of the brain is interrupted or reduced, preventing brain tissue from getting oxygen and nutrients. Brain cells begin to die in minutes.” A stroke is a medical emergency that needs efficient and timely care.

The earlier appropriate actions are taken, the faster the rate of brain damage and other complications is decreased. This is where Telehealth and Telestroke carts come into play to help not only save time but also to help save patients.

What is Telestroke Healthcare?

Telestroke Healthcare is a web-based collaboration of on-site caretakers and a certified neurologist or whomever they choose to video-in. Telestroke Healthcare helps provide services for acute stroke patients in a variety of settings, including mobile stroke units, EDs, intensive care units (ICUs), and medical-surgical units, which do not have access to on-site stroke physician services. The combination of visual, audio and hands-on care comes together with Telestroke Healthcare to get each patient the specific help they need as quickly as possible.

How the Telestroke Cart Saves Patients

When dealing with patients who are experiencing a stroke, time is an extremely important element. With the advancement of telemedicine, patients can get the help they need quicker and easier than ever before. If a patient is experiencing a stroke and there is no neurologist on-site, our Telestroke Cart makes it possible to connect with a specialist via video call. Having access to a video call through our Telestroke Cart is not only more efficient but also quicker than having to transfer patients due to there being no neurologist on-site.

The Telestroke Cart also helps combine verbal and visual treatment – rather than just trying to help over the phone, the neurologist can physically see the patient and help determine the best next steps. With the DataCart Telestroke Cart, you have a PTZ Zoom Camera complete with a camera mount that comes right on the cart itself for high-quality, adaptable video treatment.

Mobility of care is another important element when caring for a patient with a time-sensitive emergency such as a stroke. Our Telestroke Cart allows for movement with the patient as needed, with the flexibility of being able to use the cart in the patients’ room and move with the patient as they need to be moved. The Telestroke Cart is not a location-specific tool, making it the perfect solution for patients’ needs on the go.

How the Telestroke Cart Saves Time

Aside from our Telestroke Cart saving time to get patients the necessary treatment needed, the timely treatment also allows patients to be released quicker and with less rehabilitative needs. This helps not only slim down the time the patient is spending in the hospital but also helps the patients and medical teams recover from the traumatic event quicker and more effectively.

Our Telestroke Cart is highly efficient, equipped, and advanced – complete with customization options including your choice of camera. For more information on the Telestroke Cart and how it can help save your facility time and patients, check out this resource provided by the American Heart Association.

As telehealth continues to be an area of importance in the healthcare industry, so is the need to have the correct equipment and software that can be reliable to get the job done.

That relationship between physical equipment and software is a problem that many in our industry are trying to solve. While others in the industry choose to work independently and hope that their solutions sync later on down the pipeline, we have chosen to take a much more active approach in this marketplace, ensuring that we work with those providing the best software to ensure our customers are getting a solution made to solve problems, not create new ones.

With collaboration being an area of focus for DataCart™ to bring you the best of the best, we’d like to feature a company that is using DataCart’s workstation on wheels solutions to mobilize their software to create amazing patient/provider experiences and improve outcomes.

Optimized Telehealth Software Solutions

ITeT is a telehealth software company offering full-featured, no-code applications to rapidly and cost-effectively deliver solutions, not just products, to their customers. They understand that there is no one size fits all for telehealth. Using ITeT’s no code Admin Panel, features and functionality are enabled/disabled, plug-ins activated, integrated medical devices selected, and content easily managed.

ITeT telehealth solutions support virtual visits, remote patient monitoring (continuous and intermittent), chronic disease management, and specialty consults. They chose DataCart™ to offer a wide range of high-quality telemedicine carts and cases to meet specific customer needs.

“ITeT is all about giving customers solutions that are optimized for their business practices and preferences. DataCart™ supports our quest to deliver the right solutions to our clients.”

Brenda Ecken, ITeT Vice President

Best Practices For Mobilizing Software Using DataCart™’s Best-In-Class Workstation On Wheels Solutions

Providing quality healthcare is important, whether that’s in the office, through virtual visits, or out in the field. ITeT’s telehealth software combines its top-of-the-line platform with the multiple different workstations on wheels and telehealth solutions that DataCart™ offers so that whatever scenario you’re in, you can be confident in your equipment in both your software and physical equipment.

Virtual Patient Visits

When most people think of telehealth, virtual visits are what come to mind first. While it might seem simple on the surface to provide these solutions to patients, ensuring complicance and giving the provider the tools they need to easily track the visit all while providing a smooth experience for the patient requires a much more powerful and customizable telehealth solution than many realize.

With these regular check-ups happening more on a virtual basis, ITeT’s Doctor4U pairs extremely well with the different Telehealth carts from DataCart™ such as our Telestroke Cart. Both Doctor4U and the Telestroke Cart increase the patient’s satisfaction with virtual visits by utilizing the included Logitech 1080p camera on the cart creating a personal touch to virtual visits and eliminating the administrative hassles for both you and the patient.

Chronic Care Management And Home Care Monitoring

Healthcare doesn’t just stop at the office or over a virtual visit, the need for mobile telehealth solutions continues to rise and ITeT combines its Home Care Monitoring solutions with our Portable Telehealth Kits to provide the best to patients no matter the location.

Home Care Monitoring helps lower the number of readmissions and reduces the length of hospital stays for those who still need care but could do so from the comfort of their home. From measuring blood, pressure, oxygen saturation, heart rate, temperature, and ECG, to sharing images with patients, the portable telehealth kit is a top choice for providers using their Home Care Monitoring solution.

The combination of ITeT’s telehealth solutions and DataCart™’s computer carts and kits have made a positive impact on both the care providers and the patients that they serve. DataCart™’s high-quality craftsmanship, customer services, and USA label allow ITeT to offer customers a wide range of telehealth carts and kits that meet their specific needs which only solidifies the goal of delivering the best solutions to providers.

Telehealth is going to be used in healthcare for years to come!

That is a fact that no one in the medical industry is going to debate. With the advancement in telemedicine technology and equipment, telehealth is becoming much easier and more affordable to do.

While the recent COVID-19 pandemic has launched how much telehealth is used in healthcare forward in terms of adoption by both patients and physicians, many facilities are being left behind because of decreasing budgets and having their energy focused on caring for COVID patients.

However, now that we are seeing some reprieve, it might be time to prepare your medical facility by looking at the latest telemedicine technology on the market.

What Is Telehealth?

Telehealth is a term that describes the act of providing healthcare services to patients through technology instead of seeing them in your facility or practice. This differs slightly from the term “telemedicine” which describes providing patient care digitally like giving prescriptions are other treatments. While the terms telehealth and telemedicine differ slightly, they have the same goal: To provide care more quickly and effectively from anywhere to the people who need it most.

Is Your Facility Ready?

To better understand what your medical facility might need to implement an effective telehealth program, take note of these pieces of telehealth technology you might want to add to your budgets.

Equipment

While ‘equipment’ is a very broad category, it does really encompass every piece of telemedicine technology and equipment you might have to impact your program. Things you may want to consider include computers, PTZ cameras, medical devices, and of course, medical computer carts that will allow you to take this technology anywhere in the facility.

Ease for patients online

While you are looking into the equipment your team needs to have effective telehealth appointments, you also have to consider the process that the patients are going to go through. It is a good time to review the entire patient process from booking the appointment all the way through post-care and see where there might be a roadblock to making things easy. This may require you to make a couple of large process changes, but you will thank yourself later when patients see just how easy the process of telehealth used in healthcare is.

Rooms for staff to have appointments

Space is at an absolute premium in medical facilities, however, dedicated space for your team to take telehealth appointments is a must. While it might seem like a big ask in the beginning, you will quickly realize that dedicating space to virtual appointments will reduce the number of rooms needed per day and put much less of a strain on the space needed for care.

Is Your Staff Ready?

Getting all the telehealth technology and preparing the rest of the facility for telehealth is one thing. Making sure that your staff is trained and ready is another. While your team is likely a very intelligent one that has at least some experience using technology to do their charts and other things, telehealth is an entirely different ball game with a lot of things to learn!

Making sure your staff is trained and ready to go is another essential piece in preparing your program for telehealth used in healthcare.

Equipment

New equipment means new questions to answer and new things that your IT and technology team are going to have to deal with. Trying to make sure your team is as trained as possible on the new equipment they are going to be using is crucial to making your program start smoothly.

Software

Along with new equipment comes new software to learn and understand. While there are many telehealth systems that are out there today to make this easier, it is important to pick the right one for you that has a key focus on training.

While there is always going to be a focus on in-person primary care, you will be amazed how much strain you can take off your team with a telehealth program.

Investing in the right telemedicine technology and training is going to be crucial to the success of your program, if you haven’t already, be sure to see what things are out there and how they can be best applied to your facility.

So what do you think? Are you ready?

It is amazing to see how far telehealth has come over the last few years.

Back before the COVID-19 pandemic, the telehealth industry was the “wild west” where there really were no rules that were set in stone. While many healthcare facilities have some telehealth programs and policies in place, they were not fully formed and doctors were tasked with doing telemedicine in the best ways that they knew how.

Fast forward 2 years and now telehealth has become a permanent staple of the medical industry. Patients are now able to see a medical professional right from the comfort of their own home saving both, them and the care provider, time and money.

With the advancement and advantages of telehealth, came the advancement of the technology used by healthcare facilities. We have seen it ourselves with our medical carts and how facilities are fully customizing them to make their telehealth programs even better and take their technology anywhere.

And when we say taking telehealth anywhere, we mean ANYWHERE! One of the products that customers new and old inquire about the most is our new Mobile Telemedicine Exam Kits produced in partnership with Care On Location.

These telemedicine kits have many amazing benefits that allow them to solve problems in healthcare that were previously thought to be unsolvable.

Top Benefits Of The Telehealth Kit

So what are the top benefits of using mobile telehealth kits and adding them to your technology stack?

Mobility

Most obviously, having the ability to take telehealth anywhere is one of the biggest benefits of mobile telehealth kits. So many times in healthcare, patient outcomes can vary dramatically just because of how quickly care can be administered. Increased mobility of your telehealth program allows those who might not have easy access to care, to get what they need much quicker, even in the toughest of conditions. The kit can also be combined with a quick-release tripod backpack enabling it to be carried and set up anywhere.

Usability

While it is possible to still bring telemedicine solutions with you on the go without a kit, having a neat, organized, and secure way to transport technology and other life-saving items makes mobile telehealth that much more effective.

Cost-Effectiveness

While some others offer similar solutions in the market, the pricing on our telehealth kits allows you to make a smart investment into your telehealth offering.

Operations

If you have an already existing telehealth program at your medical facility. Telemedicine kits are the perfect addition to round out your offering and bring another new element to how you can increase patient care and outcomes.

Use Models For The Telehealth Kit

While all of this might sound good to you, you might be asking yourself exactly how telehealth kits can be implemented into real-world scenarios. Here are just some of the ways our customers are currently using our telehealth kits and while not all of them might apply to you, there may be some inspiration to show you just how valuable they can be.

Community Health Workers

Many clinics around the world are recognizing that they are unable to fully reach their patients through their brick-and-mortar locations. Community health workers are being trained to take healthcare to the patient and provide simple services such as educating patients about disease, perform health screenings, promote health practices, and linking patients into services. These front-line workers provide needed services to areas where health disparities are the greatest. Mobile Telehealth Kits add a next-level capability to community health workers, enabling them to be the eyes and ears of medical staff.

Homeless Populations

One of the biggest hurdles in providing care to the homeless population is the ability to get them to a facility for care. A lack of transportation alongside a general fear of medical invention in this population makes providing care even more difficult. Mobile Telehealth Kits allow medical professionals to meet them where they are and provide the care that these people desperately need to treat both physical and mental health conditions.

Prison Systems

Medical teams at prison facilities deal with an extremely unique set of circumstances including high patient-to-care provider ratios, fewer resources and funding, and dangerous circumstances that don’t always allow them to provide the care a patient might need. Telemedicine kits can assist by getting these care providers access to experts that can help them with particularly difficult cases or for specialists to weigh on complex cases without having to transport the prisoner.

Worksite Injuries

When an injury occurs on a worksite, time could be of the essence. Depending on the specific injury or work being done, get quick access to an expert and be a challenge. Having access to a professional quickly who can help assess an injury and proper next steps can prevent possible complications before they start.

Search and Rescue Operations

Many of these operations happen in rough terrain far from any form of civilization let alone a medical facility. Having mobile kits that are easy to carry and can withstand the elements can give search and rescue teams access to resources that they could have never dreamed of before. Imagine a doctor in New York being able to assess a hiker in the middle of the Rocky Mountains and make sure that the team at the scene has the best information to keep that person safe.

As you can see, there are so many ways to implement Mobile Telemedicine Exam Kits. We are proud to be offering a solution that will allow patients everywhere to get the care that they need quickly and to make it as easy as possible for the teams administering care.

If you want to learn more about our Mobile Telemedicine Exam Kits, contact us today!

There is one thing for certain – technology has made the world incredibly small. 

And there might not be an industry that has benefited from this fact more than the healthcare industry. Technology has allowed our healthcare facilities to access information that we once thought impossible, it has allowed us to connect with patients in new ways, and provide solutions and expertise to patients across the globe.

This is Telemedicine. 

Telemedicine is rapidly changing the healthcare industry, so it is important to consider these advantages for your facilities so that you can make the proper investments now before you are forced to play catch up

Telemedicine is More Convenience 

We all know the convenience of telemedicine for patients, but convenience is an advantage that healthcare professionals realize as well. 

It is estimated that nearly 75% of Urgent Care and  ER visits are either unnecessary or could be handled safely and effectively over the phone or video, according to statistics from the American Medical Association and Wellness Council of America. 

Having this reduction of in-person visits reduces the stress on the entire healthcare staff and makes it much easier for them to treat the patients that really need care. It reduces the amount of time that they spend on their feet, keeping energy levels higher and keeping fatigue at bay. 

On the other side of the convenience advantage – With telemedicine, you are able to take the healthcare professionals to the patient. With a product like a mobile telemedicine exam kit, you can service a broad area of individuals by bringing their needs to them when needed. 

Telemedicine Saves Time

Healthcare facilities and professionals are under a lot of pressure to reduce the amount of time being spent with patients in order to see more individuals in a day. One way to do this without reducing the quality of care is through the use of telemedicine.

Studies have shown that the average visit with a doctor lasts approximately 17.4 minutes. On average, physicians that use telemedicine saw a reduction in that time by 20%. While that might not seem like a big number, it can add up over time allowing physicians to either see more patients or increase the quality of the care being provided. 

These appointments are shorter for a few reasons. For one, telemedicine appointments tend to be more focused with less chit-chat. Doctors also have access to all patients’ information directly in front of them at all times, making it easier to reference, and finally the simple fact that they do not need to jump from room to room shaves off a few minutes as well. 

Over the course of the year, think about those implications for your facilities. 

Telemedicine Makes for Better Assessments 

It may seem like a surprise, but telemedicine appointments tend to create better assessments than their in-person counterparts.

It all comes down to focus. While a Physician might not have access to all the tools they would typically use in a standard office setting, they are able to ask a lot more clarifying questions that might help them get to the answer that they need.

Also, your physicians can get more of a “lay of the land” of someone’s home or get other information that may end up making a large difference in the assessment and potential diagnosis.

This is particularly important in the field of mental health. A trained professional might be able to assess things going on around the patient that might be helpful in assisting them. In addition, they might be able to get a better assessment at the time of the issue instead of having that person try to remember how they were feeling or what was happening.

Telemedicine Increases Access to Specialists

One of the biggest advantages of telemedicine for both patients and facilities is having easy access to specialists from around the globe. By implementing telemedicine, you expand the knowledge base of your entire team and you let your patient know that you are getting them the best information possible. 

Telemedicine Increases Cost Savings

Let’s talk about the bottom line. Earlier, we talked about how the time that is saved via a telemedicine appointment can allow a physician to see more patients in a day. While this is a great advantage, the inverse, reducing expenses, is also true!

While telemedicine does require some level of initial investment, such as a telemedicine cart or telemedicine exam kit, the long-term savings will surpass it over time. 

These savings come in many forms from the use of equipment (gloves, masks, etc.), reducing the total number of beds being taken at any given time, and just making the overall healthcare system move much more efficiently. 

Overall, there are a ton of incredible advantages to care providers who use and invest in telemedicine. Regardless of these advantages, telemedicine is becoming the future of healthcare and it is important for healthcare providers to invest early in this technology so they can experience the true advantage of it for themselves!