6-7 IAN Telehealth

 Eneida O. Roldan, MD, MPH, MBA, Chief Executive Officer of a company  named Global Telehealth Solutions wrote me an e-mail as a follow-up to a story I did about rural medicine. It says the following:  “I am in receipt of the commentary on your article on the effectiveness of telemedicine in rural areas. I am the CEO of a telehealth company. As a physician, I know firsthand the cost of providing care to the underserved and most importantly the need for an efficient and cost effective healthcare delivery system. We at Global Telehealth Solutions are most interested in providing and implementing our products and services in rural areas since they are the most vulnerable to not receiving adequate quality health care due to possible socioeconomic or geographic limitations.” I called Dr. Roldan and asked her what the challenges were that confronted healthcare providers in rural areas: “Their access is not there, some of them may not even have the wherewithal education to really be able to handle complex equipment, complex monitoring systems and more importantly the cost has to be low.”  Dr. Roldan suggests that her company is working on technologies and strategies for bringing more sophisticated healthcare to rural areas and to rural doctors via her Global Telehealth Solutions company. I have heard of this before. Between telephone and video monitoring, a local doctor can conference in with a specialist in a remote part of the country in an effort to bring proper care to patients in need.