Intensive development of telemedicine – what specialists are the industry looking for now?
Remote medicine allows you to provide medical services regardless of the patient’s location. Telemedicine uses both medicine and IT and telecommunications elements. According to the data of Kry, a company specializing in telemedicine, only until June this year, the interest in digital consultations with GPs increased by a record 115%.
The potential of telemedicine
Thanks to telemedicine, it is possible not only to perform tele-consultation, but also to monitor the patient’s condition, even to carry out diagnostics, rehabilitation or even remote surgery. Some telemedicine tools have been known in the world for a long time and both doctors and patients have already got used to them. There is already an e-prescription in the world that has been successfully operating for several months, and e-referral will soon become another commitment.
However, it should be remembered that currently telemedicine is associated with many modern solutions. Innovative devices are becoming more and more popular that monitor the patient’s health on an ongoing basis, send data to doctors or perform tests remotely. These include mobile breathing analyzers, rehabilitation devices, and even home “medical stations” with an integrated blood glucose meter, blood pressure monitor or scale. Big data tools and artificial intelligence are also increasingly used in medicine.
It is true that they will not fully replace a doctor, but they allow to eliminate some mistakes, suggest certain actions and, above all, save people’s time.
The development of telemedicine and a forecast for the coming years
According to a report by consulting and analytical company PMR, the market for telemedicine services was 4.1 million. It is predicted that by 2023 its value will reach 143.4 million, and the growth dynamics at the turn of these years should have increased from 24% to 29%. Now that telemedicine is no longer an option and has become a necessity, we can expect even greater increases in this industry.
According to PwC experts, apart from teleconsultation, the most promising services are telediagnostics, telemonitoring and telerehabilitation. The following were indicated as the benefits of using these solutions: an increase in the quality of services provided, speed of diagnosis, shortening queues to specialists, increasing the availability of doctors and improving the efficiency of centers. Moreover, the spread of telemedicine across Europe would save as much as over 100 billion euros a year.
How do patients feel about telemedicine? According to a study conducted by the Biostat Research center, up to 72% of people believe that telemedicine is currently the safest form of contact with a doctor. At the end of April, 43.8% of people said they had used remote medical care in the past seven days. Compared to March, this increase was as much as 17%. For patients, it is therefore the quickest and safest form of obtaining medical help without leaving home. Thanks to this, the risk of disease among health care workers is reduced, and for facilities it is a profitable branch of activity.
Recruitment demand in the medical industry
From the above data, we can conclude that the development of telemedicine will continue to gain momentum. This will undoubtedly have an impact on the staffing demand in the medical industry and its diversification. In addition to qualified doctors or nurses, IT and telecommunications specialists, managers, or people dealing with financing and management in the area of health care will also be required. However, the medical industry imposes certain specificity of action, so recruiting specialists who have knowledge in their field, but are also able to relate it to the realities of medicine, is very difficult.
Therefore use the support of HR experts from the Talent Place community and find specialists in the telemedicine industry. Thanks to a large community of recruiters specialized in many industries – including medical – we are able to find and match employees to any organization. Talent Place recruiters work remotely and are dispersed in various locations, and therefore also know the specifics of the local labor market. This means that they reach exactly where they should be reaching and are able to quickly find a perfectly matched candidate. All processes go online and healthcare recruitment is no exception. See for yourself that it can be even more effective.