Telehealth And Telemedicine – What’s The Difference?

The place where tech and medicine interact can be a confusing one. Those who are making policy and those who advocate its use can be prone to the use of technical terms. In many cases, those terms are used incorrectly and indiscriminately.

They do very little to give you information about telehealth and in some cases, just confuse the situation further.

In many cases, people use terms like telehealth and telemedicine as interchangeable terms when the reality is far different.

Telehealth is a broad array of services and technologies that are used to offer patient care. WHO says that telehealth is “Surveillance, health promotion, and public health functions.”

On the other hand, Telemedicine is a part of telehealth that refers to the provision of health care services and education alone. It provides these things via telecommunications and over distance to clients and patients.

Telemedicine is quite often used for follow-up visits and non-emergency issues but may also be used to manage chronic problems, medication administration, and consulting visits.

To add one more to the mixture. WHO or the World Health Organization also uses the term Telematics. What that means or refers to is a combination of both telemedicine and telehealth or any other health-related action that is carried out using technology over distance.

To make a long story short, not all telehealth is telemedicine but all telemedicine is telehealth. Makes sense, when you look at it that way, right?

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