New 2021 Report on Telehealth for Libraries

Nice writeup feature by Craig Settles on the state of library telehealth and its benefits. 22 pages with illustrations. Worth noting that we assisted Mr. Settles in some of his research. You can download the full report at i-telehealth.com, our telehealth and telemedicine vertical information blog.

Excerpt:

Telehealth for Libraries Guide Report

Libraries on the vanguard of transforming healthcare delivery, what is your library going to do in this moment when the federal government is committing over $7 billion to communities making a difference?

This guide lays out how to a) get to the heart of patrons’ healthcare needs, b) create something that’s never been done in your community before, and c) market your telehealth and broadband grant proposal.

More than video chats, telehealth uses intranets and Internet networks to observe, diagnose, initiate or otherwise medically intervene, administer, monitor, record, and/or report on the continuum of care people receive when ill, injured, or wanting to stay well.

I’ll take this definition one step further and differentiate between

1) real-time telehealth,
2) store-and-forward telehealth, and
3) “passive” telehealth.

Real-time telehealth are activities happening “right here and now,” often involving medical or healthcare professionals. In a library setting, a patron is video chatting with a doctor from a study room or other enclosed private space, or a traveling nurse sets up in a room to do hypertension screening with patrons and video conferencing with a doctor in another location should patrons have questions.

Store-and-forward telehealth is collecting medical data and sending it electronically to another site for later evaluation. Patrons who don’t want to go over their data cap (limit) might use a library’s Wi-Fi to send medical records, test results, or digital images. For maximum privacy and security, telehealth applications receive and send using HIPAA-compliant software.

In the context of this guide, “passive” telehealth refers to educational Web content, digital knowledgebases, and software applications that help us understand, prevent, treat, or recover from threats to our physical and mental health. Few entities are as competent as libraries for making knowledge easy to find and sort through.

Telehealth making a difference

There are at least five primary ways to impact healthcare delivery through telehealth at libraries: