Telemonitoring should have a central role in future health care

Correspondence: Thomas I Lemon School of Medicine, Cardiff University, University Hospital of Wales, Heath Park, Cardiff CF14 4XW, Wales Email [email protected] Dear editor Firstly we would like to thank Upatising et al for undertaking an interesting and relevant study. Health professionals are well aware of the impending crisis that the aging demographics will have on future worldwide health care provision. With increasing hospital stays, “bed blocking,” and longer duration of chronic illness as a result of increasing life expectancy the crisis is indeed underway. With shifting society, the attitudes and expectations of health care are changing significantly. With increased pressures on waiting list times, drug provision/ administration, and service provision, patients become more critical and budgets become tighter. Outside of health care the technological advancement is astonishing. Smartphones, robotics, tablets, the internet has truly revolutionized health care provision and training in countless ways. The proposed union of this technological advancement with ‘older adults,’ as a mechanism to prevent hospitalisation through access to health care via telemonitoring is one which can help reduce the pressure on the health service. However more development and research needs to be undertaken to expand this proposal. Through the clinical use of telemedicine, frail individuals would be kept out of the hospital system, in which they often can become ‘trapped;’ allowing them to stay at home, where many wish to be. This equates to additional bed space, more nurse availability (as often these patients need more care than others), and a lesser reduction in mobility (very often frail patients in hospital become quickly immobile, which is unlikely to have occurred if they had still been at home). An issue however surrounds the ever changing systems in health care, such as ObamaCare and the National Health Service in Great Britain. In these organizations with significant financial and political input from their governments, amendments and additions such as implementing telemedicine centrally, would be problematic and likely to have as many opponents as proponents given the results of this study. This trial result failed to excite, however it does not stop one from turning to investigate more methods of how telemedicine could be used to provide better, more cost effective and patient-centered health care in the future. We strongly believe that telemedicine of this kind would be of benefit in the future. Dovepress