Telemedicine and Mobile Health Technology: Effective Management of Digestive Diseases

Telemedicine can be defined as the use of telecommunication and information technology to provide health care from an extent. It has been used to overcome distance barriers and to improve access to medical services that would often not be consistently available in distant rural communities. It has been used to save lives in critical and emergency situations.

Telemedicine is use to effectively manage disease activity, help monitor symptoms, improve compliance to the treatment protocol, increase patient satisfaction, and enhance the patient-to-provider communication.

EBSCO, PubMed, and Web of Science databases are used in Medical Subject Headings and other keywords to identify studies that utilized telemedicine in patients with digestive disease. 

Distance management intervention is defined as any remote management method in which there is a patient self-management component whereby the patient interacts remotely via a self-guided management program, electronic interface, or self-directs open access to clinic follow up.

Now a day’s inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is biggest issue of the treatment as it is a group of chronic intestinal diseases that adversely affects quality of life and societal interaction and functioning. They are associated with significant morbidity and mortality, so telemedicine has helped in a great way.

Clinicians have focused on techniques to improve the out-patient management of IBD patients. Strategies to improve patient education alone increase IBD-related knowledge, but do not consistently improve clinical outcomes or decrease health care resource use. Focusing on improving self-management behaviour, however, may be effective. A previous systematic review on patient education and self-management reported that self-management strategies demonstrated improved outcomes of symptoms, psychological well-being, and health-care resource use.

Distance management of gastrointestinal diseases can be an important part of the management of patients, but may require tailoring of these approaches to select patient populations. A combined web-based and patient directed open access clinic distance management program, whereby patients interact with an electronic web-based management program and are able to initiate self-treatment strategies and self-referral to clinic assessments, may be a solution.

Telemedicine and mobile health technology may be effective in managing disease activity and improving quality of life in digestive diseases. Future studies should explore both gastrointestinal and gastroesophageal diseases using these types of interventions.