There may be some big changes in the way you visit your doctor soon. Virtual health care technology that's being taught at the University at Buffalo could allow patients to receive checkups from the comfort of their own homes.
"Virtual health care consists of Telemedicine and Telehealth," according to Dr, Tammy Austin-Ketch, a clinical professor at U.B.'s Nursing School. "Telemedicine is simply the viewing of the patient and having a conversation, a video chat, over the internet. Telehealth involves more advanced technologies."
"We can basically, through our Telehealth modalities, look in your ears, look in your eyes, listen to the heart beat and transfer all of this electronically over the internet to a provider or a supervising faculty," says Austin-Ketch. "Your actually doing almost everything you can do in a brick and mortar office in a setting that is not the office, the patient's home, in a community center. We are teaching the students these cutting-edge technologies that will become the future of health care."
The U.B. School of Nursing recently received a one-year SUNY High Needs grant to train nursing students in telehealth. U.B. indicates the money is being used to equip students and faculty with mobile health technology that can be used to check blood pressure, help diagnose illnesses and prescribe medications among other things.
More than 50 graduate students and 10 nursing faculty members will be trained on how to use the equipment.
"The face of health care is changing rapidly in the United States," says Austin-Ketch. "It is paramount that the nursing students who are educated at U.B. receive the most current, cutting-edge and technology explicit education that is possible."
