A recent study reveals that in a couple of years most medical services will be carried online, reducing the need to visit doctors' offices.
The study was led by researchers from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health jointly with the Common Wealth fund in America. The findings are based on the electronic data received on health informatics and health services using MEDLINE, the Cochrane Database, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's database on health IT.
Initially, online access to electronic health records and services was limited to only 10 percent but in recent years it has increased to around 70 percent, the study reveals. Patients are increasingly more comfortable in getting physician's services with the modern consumer directed health apps, telemedicine and so on.
"We really feel we're developing a whole new way of practicing medicine, and it's exciting. Patients do have to get comfortable with this, but I remember a time where we were worried about electronic banking, and we got over that," said Dr. Peter Antall, medical director of the Online Care Group, reports CNet.
According to the researchers, the extensive online medical usage will help the doctors reach more patients, the numbers can go up by 4-9 percent. The demand for specialists is likely to fall by 2-5 percent as the patients are more likely to stick to the general practitioners. With telemedicine and digital care, the services will be more prompt and availability will increase by nearly 12 percent. The access to online medical care will reduce visits to doctors by around 4-7 percent.
In fact the researchers are of the view that the rampant usage of online medical care can actually change the face of the health IT industry in the U.S. in the coming days. "The results of our study are important because they provide a forward looking snapshot of how health IT will profoundly impact the American health care workforce over the next decade or two," said Jonathan Weiner, the director of the Center for Population Health Information Technology (CPHIT) an lead researcher for the study, according to recent post on Science Daily.
The researchers concluded that further analysis is needed to determine the extent of online medical care impact on the U.S. health IT industry.
