A remote medical care system will not only enable patients to receive medical attention without traveling long distances, saving time and money, but also allow hospitals to collect a wide array of patient information through the system, an executive at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) said yesterday.
At a seminar on remote health care applications and technology standardization, Shau Yio-wha (邵耀華), director of ITRI’s Medical Electronics and Device Technology Center, said that when patients seek medical help in hospital, about 45 percent of their time is spent getting medical checks and waiting for doctors to complete medical records.
However, if patients could send their medical records to hospitals before receiving medical care through a long distance care system, a lot of time can be saved.
Such a system would also help improve outpatient registration accuracy, Shau said.
The value of long distance home medical care not only lies in the costs savings, but in improving the quality of medical care for patients, particularly those with chronic illnesses who need long-term care, Shau said.
Lyn McFarlane, general manager of business operations of UK-based Tunstall, a leading provider of telecare and telehealth solutions, told the seminar that using a remote healthcare system could help boost patients’ self-confidence, increase their peace of mind and promote greater patient self-management.
For example, McFarlane said that Tunstall used a telehealth system to monitor 30 high-risk patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in their own homes in the city of Sheffield in northern England.
Five months later, results showed that telecare in the patients’ homes helped reduce their rate of hospital visits by 50 percent and the number of home visits by medical personnel by 80 percent.
The system was estimated to have saved £1.2 million (US$1.9 million) in medical costs a year for local hospitals, McFarlane said.
Over the past three years, a number of companies in Taiwan have ventured into the telecare arena, but the pace of development of this type of service is still slow, McFarlane said.
She urged Taiwan’s government to pioneer a trial system and conduct related evaluation for the launch of remote medical care services.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater