Williams Aaron M, Bhatti Umar F, Alam Hasan B, Nikolian Vahagn C
Department of Surgery, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
Mhealth. 2018 May 2;4:11. doi: 10.21037/mhealth.2018.04.03. eCollection 2018.
Telemedicine has become one of the most rapidly-expanding components of the health care system. Its adoption has afforded improved access to care, greater resource efficiency, and decreased costs associated with traditional office visits and has been well established in a wide array of fields. Telemedicine has been adopted in several domains of surgical care. In recent years, the role of telemedicine in postoperative care has caught attention as it has demonstrated excellent clinical outcomes, enhanced patient satisfaction, increased accessibility along with reduced wait times, and cost savings for patients and health care systems. In this narrative review, we describe the history of telemedicine, its adoption in the field of surgery and its various modalities, its use in the postoperative setting, and the potential benefits to both patients and healthcare systems. As telemedicine continues to emerge as a powerful tool for health care delivery, we also discuss several barriers to its widespread adoption as well as the future utility of telemedicine in postoperative care.
远程医疗已成为医疗保健系统中发展最为迅速的组成部分之一。它的应用改善了医疗服务的可及性，提高了资源利用效率，并降低了与传统门诊就诊相关的成本，且已在众多领域得到广泛应用。远程医疗已被应用于外科护理的多个领域。近年来，远程医疗在术后护理中的作用受到关注，因为它已展现出出色的临床效果、提高了患者满意度、增加了可及性并缩短了等待时间，同时为患者和医疗保健系统节省了成本。在这篇叙述性综述中，我们描述了远程医疗的历史、其在外科领域的应用及其各种模式、其在术后环境中的使用，以及对患者和医疗保健系统的潜在益处。随着远程医疗继续成为提供医疗服务的有力工具，我们还讨论了其广泛应用的几个障碍以及远程医疗在术后护理中的未来效用。
