Telemedicine
The onset of the covid-19 pandemic has imposed a significant challenge in the healthcare sector, promoting the need to introduce smartphones to facilitate communication between healthcare professionals and patients or students while in their homes. The pandemic saw the overreliance on telemedicine to offer medical solutions to patients in remote areas. Telemedicine is an approach that allows patients with chronic infections like cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, stroke, or hypertension to be discharged and allowed to continue with their medication in the comfort of their homes. The program provides for follow-up by nurses and other healthcare professionals using smartphones or any computer device while patients are in the comfort of their homes or offices.
Telemedicine is slowly but steadily becoming popular in the United States. Organizations such as Baylor, which are known cancer centers, have adopted telemedicine for patients with underlying conditions to control the spread of the pandemic and reduce the risk of the pandemic on the vulnerable population. One widely used telemedicine approach used in many academic healthcare centers is smartphones. The mobile device is effective in information gathering, storing, and dissemination; time management, maintaining and accessing health records; communication and consulting; reference and information gathering, clinical decision-making, patient management, monitoring, and medical education and training.
Baylor University Medical Center offers the latest cancer-related treatments, which are of excellent quality. The hospital opened its cancer center in 2012, which has helped reduce cancer-related issues across the country. The medical center has over 1200 physicians and staff and more than one thousand beds. Baylor is a 1065 bed system with 6 specific medical facilities. Baylor has received high federal rating for heartcare, gynecology, urology, and orthopedics. In addition, Baylor has obtained a high national ranking for patient care, innovation, research and education. Baylor is a center for physician and nursing training with several programs. Baylor absorbs its students back to work as medical practitioners after they graduate. Baylor is located in Dallas, USA. The organization is engaged in several activities that require the use of smartphones. The major activity of Baylor is education and research. The implementation of smartphones will help the organization pass knowledge to students and patients, reduce medical cost by cutting travel costs, and enhance healthcare quality and care outcomes.
According to Lo et al. (2012), smartphones are frequently used among students, physicians, and medical interns, with overall use rates reaching 80 percent. These reports indicate that iOs-based systems such as iPhone are the widely used platform. Smartphones are popular in academic medical centers because of their versatility. The use of smartphone applications in academic hospitals helps in the decision-making process, information search and education application, and clinical practices (Felbaum et al., 2018). There is little evidence regarding the effectiveness of smartphones in improving academic performance among medical students.
