
Telemedicine, telecare, online appointment and consultation, apps, etc. Every time the subject of telemedicine is discussed, chronic patients are mentioned and technological support, patient monitoring or cost savings are always discussed. Certainly, the chronically ill, who repeats his visits and needs more follow-up, has a high cost for public and private health, but in many cases, we talk about elderly people and serious ailments, so are they the ideal group to be treated through a remote medicine system? At UNIT4 we specialize in providing management solutions for this group, which we call “fragile patients”. In my opinion, telemedicine, or more particularly online consultations, are much more suited to the follow-up of other processes (for example, it seems appropriate for certain consultations of medical specialists). There are rural areas where there are no specialists, which means that the patient has to travel to the nearest capital for many consultations. In these cases, a videoconference could be very successful. The medical interview could anticipate a first diagnosis or refer the patient to have certain tests that could be done before a second consultation already face-to-face. This type of medical teleconsultation will be more feasible for certain specialties where the doctor-patient contact does not seem, a priori, so fundamental, perhaps psychology or dermatology. From the experience of a father of young children, I also find it very useful for pediatrics, where it is very normal that emergency care is needed for problems with diagnoses, sometimes accurate. In these cases, a videoconference with the doctor could reassure us, and guide us without making it necessary to travel. In addition, many times, when talking about telemedicine for the chronically ill or telecare for the elderly, we focus on digital technology, but we forget that the support of medical professionals has to continue to be behind the whole process. For this reason, these projects are very atomized. Often, they are isolated plansthat are implemented from a given hospital, where the medical staff commits to the project or incorporates it into their work protocols, but outside of an integrated system. At Ekon we are clearly committed to a patient-based model. The content of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) is always the patient’s and we must work for him. To provide innovative solutions that put technology at the service of healthcare improvement. This is what is going to happen with all the health apps that are emerging. All of them, to be of high scientific value, need real clinical data and that is where we can “open” health management software to a new dimension: mHealth. Today’s world revolves around mobile devices that give us access to everything: bank accounts, ordering a taxi, the medical staff of our mutual, social networks … What can interest us more than our own health? However, I do not know if it is feasible to regulate the contents of health apps in the same way that in its day there was no seal of quality for reliable health websites. The process of natural selection carried out by theCitizens and users will make really useful apps last and those that offer nothing special die after a few downloads. Be that as it may, we can begin to predict the arrival of “I prescribe an app“. Many of the most common ailments can be treated with simple information. Any day, our family doctor will give us a website, an app to download or a username and password for the patient area of his personal blog. We have it closer than it seems. How do you see it? Would you like to be prescribed an app? Yes me, and that it helped me improve my real state of health, based on what they “know” about me in the different health devices in which they have treated me. Health management solutions are moving towards that mobile scenario: mHealth.