Telemedicine is emerging as a possible filter, keeping those with moderate symptoms at home while routing more severe cases to hospitals. Insurers, hospitals, and medical groups are rallying behind them as the outbreak continues. Andy Slavitt, who ran Medicare and Medicaid under President Obama, tweeted Thursday that “telemedicine needs to be the norm for more things.”
With demand for telehealth services growing across sectors of the healthcare industry, standards support the technology that makes this new facet of care possible. Both inpatient and outpatient telehealth devices almost always require access to broadband internet with sufficient bandwidth to transmit audio and video data. Video conferencing capabilities, too, are a common thread in telehealth technology. Standards have long bolstered the proliferation of broadband internet and video conferencing.
