Telemedicine for pediatrics: a comprehensive overview
January 5, 2023
Telemedicine solutions allow parents to reach out to a medical specialist whenever they need without leaving home. Pediatric practices also benefit from the development of telemedicine solutions, allowing them to expand the reach of their services and offer more flexible working schedules to their employees.
Telemedicine solutions for pediatrics connect families with children in need of health care with providers anywhere at any time. Pediatric telehealth platforms usually consist of audio and video conferencing tools as well as other means of communication between clinicians and patients.
Pediatric telehealth key market facts
growth of telehealth visits 2019-2020
Frontiersin
children used telemedicine in 2020
CDC
expected pediatric telehealth market CAGR between 2022 and 2027
ReportLinker
The architecture of a pediatric telemedicine solution
Pediatric telehealth solutions tend to have complex architectures. To help you better understand how it works, we provide a simplified scheme that shows its key elements.
Patients
Parents, guardians,
or other caregivers
Doctors and nurses
Admins
Informational dashboard
for different user groups
Cloud server for data
storage and processing
Video and audio
streaming servers
Pediatric EHR
or
or
Other 3d party apps (payment
gateways, electronic
prescription software, etc.)
Medical imaging systems
Remote patient monitoring
devices
Laboratory information systems
Key functionality of telemedicine for pediatrics
While every platform is different, most of them possess basic functionality for providing effective virtual care.
Communication
- One-on-one video and audio consultations
- Video group therapy sessions
- Chats for synchronous and asynchronous communication
- Recordings of therapy sessions or consultations
- Pre-visit or annual check-up questionnaires
Remote care
- Logs of child’s vitals, symptoms, lifestyle and nutrition
- Charts for changes in patient condition over time
- Notification of critical condition changes
Treatment and medication management
- Individual treatment plans
- Treatment adherence logs
- Adverse effect or allergy reports
- Online medication prescriptions
- Automatic orders and re-fills from selected pharmacies
- Suitable treatment substitution finder
Education materials
- Video and text materials on condition management for different age groups
- Education and support for caregivers and children with chronic conditions
- Psychological support groups
- Treatment templates and materials on rare conditions for medical personnel
Enhance the efficiency of your pediatric practice with our custom telemedicine solution
Essential integrations for pediatrics telemedicine
Though the basic pediatric telemedicine platform is enough to securely connect patients to pediatric practices, by integrating it with other medical software, medical providers can create a virtual hospital and provide a level of care comparable to in-person visits.
Pediatric EHR
Patient monitoring devices
Pharmacy management software
Medical data analytics software
Pediatric telemedicine solution
Billing and insurance management solutions
Medical image software
Practice management software
Laboratory management systems
Enables pediatricians access to patients’ full medical history
Supplies care providers with patients’ vitals, helps conduct remote examinations, and alerts patients and doctors about condition changes
Pharmacy management software
Simplifies medication prescriptions, orders, and re-fills and helps patients adhere to their treatment plan
Medical data analytics software
Contributes to the accuracy of diagnostics and helps predict future developments
Billing and insurance management solutions
Simplifies pediatric care reimbursements
Medical image software
Allows clinicians and patients access to CT scans, X-rays, ultrasounds and other medical images
Practice management software
Simplifies delegating tasks to medical personnel and scheduling patient appointments
Laboratory management systems
Delivers test results faster to patients and their care providers
Real-life examples of telemedicine in pediatrics
NightLight Connect is a pediatric telemedicine platform available across Texas. It allows patients to get urgent and after-hours medical attention from their primary care physician (PCP) or a NightLight provider. Virtual visits can be scheduled every day from 9 AM to midnight, in both English and Spanish. The platform offers teledermatology and virtual treatment for such conditions as rashes, allergies, cold, asthma, pink eye, digestive problems, flu, and others, with prescriptions sent directly to the patient's local pharmacy. In addition, NightLight offers a Lab Pass to let patients get tests from a laboratory located nearby without waiting in line to diagnose and treat conditions like urinary tract infections and strep throat.
Maven is a platform hosting a network of 30+ providers that represent more than 350 pediatric specialities – from midwives and lactation specialists to pediatricians and behavioral therapists. It offers health plans for any stage of a family journey, including conception and newborn care, pediatrics and parenting for teens.
Patients can contact Care Advocates round-the-clock with urgent medical questions, get virtual pediatric consultations, referrals and community support via a patient portal. The platform also offers a plethora of educational materials in the format of FAQs and articles. The clinic is fully inclusive and accepts major insurance plans and other types of reimbursements.
TytoCare takes the digitalization of healthcare to a new level, providing innovative virtual care solutions and device kits that allow patients conduct quality self-examinations at home. TytoCare examinations can be performed during the video consultations with physicians controlling the device, or any time a patient chooses to perform a self-checkup and then discuss the results with their medical providers.
While the solution wasn’t developed exclusively for virtual pediatrics, it benefits pediatric patients greatly, as children respond better to being examined by their caregivers rather than medical personnel and parents can check their child’s health metrics anytime.
Pediatric telehealth implementation roadmap
Even though there are numerous telemedicine platforms on the market, pediatricians often get a custom-built solution or tweak an out-of-the-box platform to cover their unique needs. To implement a telehealth solution, pediatric organizations usually go through the following five stages:
1
Requirements gathering
A team of healthcare specialists work together with the IT department or a consultant to understand the main requirements the healthcare organization has for the software.
2
Project planning
The organization’s representatives and the vendor’s team draw up a detailed plan of the implementation process that consists of hardware and network preparation, solution installation, integration, and post-implementation tuning.
3
Development
A secure and compliant software is developed by the vendor with interface matching the organization's brand style. During this stage, the solution is also connected with necessary third-party services and tested to fix any bugs and review the software’s quality.
4
Deployment and training
The developers install the telehealth solution into the organization's IT ecosystem. They or a third-party consultant can also conduct training sessions for personnel at this stage.
5
Support and modernization
Most vendors offer post-implementation support to resolve any issues that come up during their solution’s usage. They can also upgrade the telemedicine solution as the organization grows and new technologies come to the market.
Why apply telemedicine for pediatrics
Even though telehealth software in pediatrics gained popularity during the COVID pandemic, today it offers more advantages than contactless communication.
Stronger doctor-patient relationships
Telehealth bridges gaps in the continuity of care, allowing pediatric clients to feel more secure knowing they can consult a specialist when needed. Children also get very frustrated with frequent change of a medical team, and visiting the same doctors and nurses even when the family moves houses or is on vacation does wonders for their mental health. Moreover, most caregivers appreciate the ability to consult about their child’s health without taking time off from work.
All of the above contributes to the patient's satisfaction with the pediatric practice, which in turn improves their loyalty, trust, and willingness to continue using the telemedicine services of a particular provider.
Scheme title: Telemedicine Patient Satisfaction scores from children with diabetes and their parents. Data source: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov—Patient Satisfaction of Telemedicine in Pediatric and Young Adult Type 1 Diabetes Patients During Covid-19 Pandemic, 22 Mar 2022.
Increased revenue
A telehealth platform helps pediatric practices expand the variety of their services with additional video check-ups and follow-ups, and asynchronous communication with a particular specialist. Additionally, telemedicine apps enable practitioners to reach a broader audience without opening additional facilities across the country. Many specialists, like speech therapists or psychologists, can always consult patients remotely via virtual visits, saving on office expenses.
Improved personnel productivity
According to AAMC (the Association of American Medical Colleges), the US is about to see tremendous physician shortages due to burnout, inadequate or non-transparent compensation, and near-retirement age of specialists. Actively using telemedicine apps to provide remote care to patients helps medical personnel build more convenient schedules and prevent burnout. In addition, built-in payment modules in telemedicine platforms allow medical specialists to control the compensation flow better than with in-clinic visits.
Better health outcomes
Telemedicine apps allow patients to receive urgent care faster, increasing the chances of a milder course of illness and faster recovery. Remote patient and treatment monitoring also contribute to better adherence to prescribed therapy. According to Medical Economics, 91% of patients using telemedicine agreed that it helps them stick to treatment recommendations, which reduces risks of hospital readmissions and ICU visits.
Regular checkups and an abundance of educational materials provided by telehealth platforms also contributes to patient education. This is especially valuable to first-time parents and adolescents, who are in great need of proper guidance and psychological support.
Embrace telemedicine to enhance your pediatric care
Most patients tried some kind of telehealth services during the pandemic and now want to continue using telemedicine due to its round-the-clock accessibility, ease of use, and the reduced risk of getting sick in the waiting room. Telemedicine is especially welcomed in pediatrics, because children get sick often, but parents might worry that the symptoms are not worth a visit to the doctor. If you want to provide continuous care for your patients, expand your patient base, and reduce the pressure on the medical personnel, consider telemedicine software to complement your in-person care. Getting started might seem complicated, so Itransition’s experts are here to help you choose the best-fitting option and carry out its implementation end-to-end, providing personnel training in the end to teach you the ropes of telemedicine.
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FAQs about telemedicine for pediatrics
Telemedicine is a relatively new technology for the healthcare industry, so both care providers and patients have many questions about it. We gathered the most commonly asked ones for our experts to answer.
How much does telemedicine solution implementation cost?
The implementation costs vary significantly depending on the required functionality, but the market average for pediatric telemedicine solution development and implementation is between $50,000 and $350,000. For more accurate estimation, get a quote from the vendor of your choice.
Is telemedicine covered by Medicare?
Medicare and other insurance plans completely covered telehealth services for 60% of respondents of the SingleCare survey in 2021. For more information, talk to your insurance provider.
Is my child’s personal information safe with telemedicine apps?
Security of patient data is a major focus of healthcare software developers. Most telemedicine apps are developed according to modern security standards and are compliant with privacy regulations (HIPAA, GDPR, etc.) to keep your child’s information safe during and after virtual visits.
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