Peer Responses:

Length: A minimum of 150 words per post, not including references
Citations need to be within 5 (Five)  years
Context: Nursing in the USA
See the attached  for the original assignment

T5 W8 D1 R2
Telehealth can improve the health of the population, reduce health care costs, and expand access to health care. Telehealth is being utilized globally in a variety of ways such as phone consultations, live video conferencing, patient-initiated store-and-forward, SMS text messaging (asynchronous private messaging technology), and remote visits. For example, Ghana developed a free program allowing physicians to communicate with each other via a local mobile phone operator (World Health Organization, 2011). In Pakistan, the Aga Khan Foundation provides teleconsultation services to increase collaboration and medical education between the urban areas and community-based health centers (World Health Organization, 2011). Also, according to the International Telecommunications Union and the Global System for Mobile Communications Association, 90% of commercial wireless signals cover the worlds population. Currently, 89% of rural regions in Africa have access to the internet (Kim & Zuckerman, 2019). Therefore, allowing an increasing amount of mobile telemedicine initiatives among counties to use mobile devices for the provider to provider consultations and transmit health-related patient data. Telehealth enables the development of an interconnected global health network able to respond to the humanitarian crisis (Kim & Zuckerman, 2019).

Although huge advancements have been made in developing countries, there are still challenges that telehealth faces for lower- and middle-income countries. Some barriers include transnational regulatory standards, technology biases, limitations on fast telecommunication networks, absence of policy and progressive leadership, and funding for advancing technology (Kim & Zuckerman, 2019). Barriers that telemedicine faces are privacy issues between families or communities that share a mobile phone, SMS texting message word limits, language barriers, illiteracy, and lack of technical support (World Health Organization, 2011, p. 27).

In conclusion, the global telemedicine market is expected to increase from its value of $38.3 billion in 2018 to $130.5 billion by 2025 (Global Market Insights, 2019). This data indicates that government leaders, activists, stakeholders, and health care providers on a global scale are recognizing that telehealth technologies can be used globally to provide appropriate and specialized care to unserved, disaster-stricken, and rural communities.

Global Market Insights. (2019, March). Telemedicine market share report- global 2019-2025 industry data. Retrieved from Global Market Insights: https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/telemedicine-market
Kim, T., & Zuckerman, J. E. (2019, December). Realizing the potential of telemedicine in global health. Journal of Global Health, 9(2), 1-4. doi: 10.7189/jogh.09.020307
World Health Organization. (2011). New horizons for health through mobile technologies: Second global survey on eHealth. Retrieved from Global Observatory for eHealth Series: https://www.who.int/goe/publications/goe_mhealth_web.pdf