Use of Smart Tele-medicine Technologies for Homecare Services to Reduce Physician Waiting Time

The care of dependent people has emerged as a major health and ethical issue. Moreover, there are not many such physicians who can carry out the patient care in the homecare setting. This creates a healthcare gap for rendering healthcare services for homebound patients.
Similar situation was faced by Dubai Health Authority Primary Healthcare Sector (DHA PHCS) for the homecare services where a team of physician and nurse initially visits the home care patient to provide home care services. Most of the elderly population who has some degree of disabilities wishes to remain at home and receive healthcare services as much as possible. During follow-up visits, any unplanned physician visits required a minimum 2 days’ time and this created a service gap for the needed clients.
The purpose of this project was to reduce the unplanned physician consultation for home care patient by adopting telemedicine technologies. The telehealth consultation process addresses the lacunae of communication between the homecare nurse and a specialist physician/ GP to get a feedback and/or instructions as indicated by an assessment during homecare.
The Objectives of the project were;
1. Reduce the unplanned physician consultation time to less than 2 minutes by introducing the telemedicine services for homecare clients in PHCS.
2. Eliminate the need for the physician to travel for unplanned visits for home care services.
3. Reduce the response time for unplanned physician consultation to less than 90 seconds for home care services.