(A) future strategy of urban telemedicine with focus on the remote monitoring system

Abstract

Telemedicine has been commonly used as an adjunct in the form of delivery that may help improving the health of the patients, especially in industrialized countries. Advances in technology provide convenience and usefulness for the implementation of telemedicine, but in contrast, non-technical factors such as social, political, ethical, economic, and legal factors surrounding telemedicine, directly or indirectly, involved in the degree of expansion of telemedicine. In particular, because the telemedicine system is a trust-based exchange of personal biological information between the patients who provide biological information and the physicians who interact with proper prescription, a detailed analysis of societal obstacles is required. This study emphasized the necessities of the analysis of the past and the present research to establish the future strategy for urban telemedicine. Urbanization is a globally presenting phenomenon, and its growth rate is particularly higher in lower-income countries, but there is no integrated study for urban telemedicine utilizing the reliable methodologies yet. Assuming that various images to be formed based on numerous data may be the alternative futures, the chronological analysis should be attempted to approach the possible futures for implementation of urban home blood pressure telemonitoring (HBPT). The author tried to select and analyze the ambiguous issues of the past and the present materials, which were exposed to urban HBPT. From these issues, we tried to find the strategic implications for the application of results of the research and to draw the effective telemedicine policy, which can be reached to the preferred future of urban telemedicine. To this end, the author systematically analyzed the effect of HBPT in hypertensive patients in urban areas from the precedent evidence-based literature, and the data were synthesized to lay the foundation for deriving future strategies. Then, the causes of various stakeholders' resistance over the telemedicine system were analyzed to resolve the current conflicting issues and tried to build a consensus for the smooth implementation of telemedicine. Finally, we have derived specific key drivers related to HBPT from these results, which could be factors for approaching the preferred future of urban telemedicine. The author proposed the short- and middle-term future strategies for the successful implementation of urban telemedicine.