Modern technology is evolving the ways of communication across the globe. Today anyone can instantly communicate with one another and get solutions to their problems. These communication technologies have helped in revolutionizing various sectors including the medical and healthcare sector.
It was necessary for a person to visit the health practitioner face to face for a health consultation. Such consultation posed serious challenges in remote and hilly areas. Traveling miles to get quality healthcare was the only solution in the early days. With recent online technologies, health consultations have become easier and more flexible. The option of doctor consultation online has opened new ways of communication for patients that have been found to be highly efficient in case of pandemics, hilly areas, remote places, emergency situations, elderly people, and for people with disabilities.
Best benefits of online doctor consultation
It helps in reducing self-diagnosis errors: Today Internet has huge medical diagnosis repositories that attract people across the globe to search for articles or applications that help in self-diagnosis. With advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, expert systems, self-learning neural networks medical diagnosis applications and websites are freely available on the Internet. Recent studies have found that most of the tech savvy persons prefer to search for their symptoms online and carry out self-diagnosis. Since these self-diagnosis applications are in early stages of their development these applications are not always accurate and have limitations. In such situations consulting a virtual doctor or a professional doctor via online means of communication like text, chat, and video conferencing would be highly beneficial in accurate diagnosis. Thus, doctor consultation online can reduce false self-diagnosis and can help you to get better treatment.
Flexible and comfortable: if you have a tight working schedule and you don’t want to mess up your schedule then online doctor consultation is that comfortable and the best solution available for getting proper treatment. You can back out time at your office or at home and contact a health professional online via various modes like text chat, video conferencing, etc.
Learn about yourself: in online consultation sometimes the doctor asks you for a self-examination of your body or the symptoms. Thus, you are required to examine yourself, for example, you may need to examine the color of the skin, a lymph node, tenderness of your muscles, etc. Through self-examination, you learn a lot about the health condition of your body. This helps in building a greater understanding of the medical conditions and can play an important role in your life.
No infection risks of hospitals and clinics: during your physical visit to a hospital or a clinic you come across lots of sick people. While waiting for your turn you are in the vicinity of sick people and thus have a high risk of catching any infection. The chances of catching infection increases if you have a compromised immune system or have low immunity power. Doctor consultation online reduces the risk of infections from hospitals and clinics as during consultation online with the doctor you are not meeting any other sick people.
Avoids embarrassment due to anonymity: it is found that many patients avoid consulting a doctor due to embarrassment especially when they suffer from sexual disorders or mental illness. Avoiding health consultation in such a situation can cause serious health issues in the later stages of life. Doctor consultation online opens a new door for such patients where the patient can enjoy his or her anonymity and consult a doctor related to health issues without getting embarrassed. The online consultations are private, secure, and confidential. Thus, the patient is released from the stress of the leakage of his or her health situation and can get the necessary health treatment without getting embarrassed.
Prompt medical advice: among the greatest benefit of availing the services of doctor consultation online is that the patient does need not to wait in a clinic or a hospital for doctor availability. Rather the patient can now use devices like laptops, mobile phones, and tablets for getting prompt medical advice. Many applications provide service 24/7 where the doctors are available online at all times thereby giving patients an opportunity for instant and prompt medical services.
More and more ways of online consultation are emerging that are aiming to provide online consultation in an efficient and flexible manner to patients. But online consultation has its own limitations and cannot completely replace physical offline doctor consultation. Online doctor consultation must be used as an assisted technology.
Conclusion
Getting instant medical advice is the aim of numerous online doctor consultation services. These services are highly beneficial when you have tight schedules or are stuck in a remote place. It is highly beneficial for elderly people and people with disability. But more diagnoses require tests and scans and thus online consultation cannot avoid physical visits to the hospitals rather it can simplify and provide the best direction for further treatment. There are numerous modes of communicating with the doctor online and most of these modes rely on user-friendly applications that makes consultation easier. You can select any method like Audio consultation, Text consultation or video consultation as per choice.
